For those of you trying to set up your Apple Watch 3 LTE with ATT, beware. ATT has no idea how to do it. The answer, after an hour at the store, is to make them load your watch’s EID number on the bottom of the watch. They will tell you at first their system doesn’t take that number, but it does. After they loaded my EID number, it all went smoothly. You may have to restart the watch and the iphone, but it works. ATT online tells you all the wrong stuff—you need a new SIM card—but the sim is electronic, not physical. So, I hope you all can avoid what I went through.
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Watch 3 LTE and ATT
- Thread starter Lenow
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Just a reference there are 2 great threads the provide more information on the problem, what A&T& needs to do and how you can get them to do it.
Thread 1: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cannot-set-up-cellular-on-series-3-says-at-t-not-supported.2070565/page-9#post-25098088
Thread 2: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/series-3-questions-10-month-unlimited-att-plan-ok.2068049/page-4#post-25097226
Dave
Thread 1: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cannot-set-up-cellular-on-series-3-says-at-t-not-supported.2070565/page-9#post-25098088
Thread 2: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/series-3-questions-10-month-unlimited-att-plan-ok.2068049/page-4#post-25097226
Dave
What I thought was funny is that the store manager of my AT&T store and none of the 4 AT&T tech help guys on the phone knew that you could activate the watch via the Watch App.
The Series 3 sold out in minutes so there are millions of them out there already. You’d think that they’d prepare somehow.
The Series 3 sold out in minutes so there are millions of them out there already. You’d think that they’d prepare somehow.
[doublepost=1506184249][/doublepost]Update,
I chatted with Apple Support again today, got a call back from another Senior Advisor who confirmed that I had tried everything and we agreed that it seemed to be an issue on AT&T’s end. I asked if she had senior technical contacts at AT&T who could assist. She did, placed me in a call with AT&T technical support. AT&T indicated that there is an activation issue with some accounts from the iPhone Apple Watch apps and that they are trying to work with Apple to resolve with software update / patch. However, they can work around by manually adding the watches to the plan from their end. This required me verbally providing them the IMEI and EID for each watch for each phone number. They then called me back about 20 minutes later, had me reboot watch and go through the cellular activation attempt again from the Apple Watch App on iPhone and this time it went through to complete activation on iPhone Apple Watch app.
TL/DR version:
AT&T Technical support must add Apple Watch to plan and NumberSync manually (need Watch IMEI and EID and iPhone Phone#), reboot watch, Activate Cellular again from Apple Watch app on iPhone and verify cellular service on Apple Watch via Control Center on Watch.