An AP report out today claims that AT&T has made "technical adjustments" to correct problems with its "overloaded servers", which have been making it hard or impossible for new iPhone owners to
activate their device -- and as many of you know, a non-activated iPhone is essentially useless, save for emergency calls and showing off to your friends. A spokesman for the company said that while there have been problems with getting users up and running, nearly all customers have been able to activate their phones within five to eight minutes -- though we suspect that information will just be salt in the wound to
people who are still having trouble. The rep also stated that the company is expecting new gears for its steam engines any day now, and that the laborers who shovel coal into its furnaces have doubled their efforts.
posted Jul 2nd 2007 1:09AM
haha
Now the Apple and AT&T stores around me to get some iPhones back in stock so I can buy one.
Yeah, now just for the apple online store to ship the iphones they have in stock, in hopefully less than 2-4 weeks.
My punishment for having to using bill-me-later I guess :)
blah
I KNOW WHY!!! AT&T SERVERS RUN ON WINDOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
har-har-har :S
According to latest EG poll about 40% of users who bought iPhones had them "dead" by 3 PM EST Sunday.
If numbers are around that (at 1 AM EST it was still 1 hour wait on iPhone activation line, at 1:30 - "due to extremely high volume of calls, we are NOT ABLE TO ANSWER YOUR CALL"), I want some real fucking measures taken.
AT&T holds everyone like hostages.
OPEN iPhone for every network!
If Apple will open it - most GSM operators makes improvements and voicemail will be work fine anywhere. It will be like standard in all networks. Now it's just some "special" feature from awful operator (AT&T).
It does seem to be going better after waiting only a mere 7 hours compared to the people who have been waiting 50 hours i restarted my iPhone and activation started and was done in 5 seconds.
uneducated question: is the activation process required to use the iPhone as a media device? or is it just the activation of the phone part of the device (AT&T registering the SIM module).
when you think about it, the iPhone is pretty cool-- i'd buy one, except for the fact that it is _very_ expensive. i'd much rather have a sub-$450 device that runs some sort of linux (Apple says that the iPhone runs OSX which is based off of BSD Linux) but without the phone functionality-- and a good name to back it (the sharp zaurus was great, but they had underpowered CPUs and were expensive to buy when they came out)
sorry about my grammar, it's 11:00 now :)
Before activated it has just a slider and a keypad for 911 calls, I can't even change time on it.
well, wow, that's going to be great for anyone who wants to purchase one of these off of ebay in a few years...
You can sync your iTunes account and at least play music via the headphones but once you get a good activation that sync will be erased by a new one.
LIES! I have now been waiting for more than 50 hours waiting for my activation! I have talked to four different representatives. I just got off the phone after more than an hour and a half and they told me their "CARE" program is down for about 8 hours and they can't help me any further until I call back in 8 hours. I am just activating one iPhone, and porting my number from Verizon. It shouldn't be this hard. Thanks for still nothing AT&T!
"we don't CARE"
fine print everywhere, meh...
Have you read the articles about some ways around it?
Is the number you are trying to port from a different area code than your current billing address? I've seen ways around that on the web.. Something about when it asks you where you will use your phone most, just make up an address that is in the same area code as your old number.
I tried to port a number from Verizon and It said "not eligable"...The trick to all this is to activate a new number...do not port number. Once you have the iPhone activated you can call 1-888-898-7685 (port number office) and they can switch the numbers almost instantly. Trying to port through itunes is the problem. This is what the tech people told me today.
another statement done by their "fewest drop calls" independent research company ... lol
AT&T holds everyone like hostages.
OPEN iPhone for every network!
If Apple will open it - most GSM operators makes improvements and voicemail will be work fine anywhere. It will be like standard in all networks. Now it's just some "special" feature from awful operator (AT&T).
Actually I found out even without being activated you can access the ipod and such controls and have it fully working except for of course phone calls and edge data and stuff like that all I did was switch out the sim cards. I put my old one in started up the iphone took it out, then put the new one in (the one that originally came in the iphone) and it still wasn't activated but I could use the ipod and wifi and stuff so it made the wait not as hard.
Tried with several different Cingular SIMs the very first day - didn't work.
"AT&T says iPhone activation is improving"
It couldn't get any worse.
I ordered my iphone from the apple website which I wish i hadnt done because I know I wont be seeing it for too long. I feel everyone's pain who are having trouble with activation. People need to realize that this is a first generation phone which is bound to have numerous flaws. I had similar trouble when I got my motorola q phone from apple. Setting up aol and gmail properly took a couple weeks. My friends girlfriend has had the q since it came out, still uses it, and doesnt even have her email synced with it!!!
Something that annoys me about at&t is that with my blackberry 8800 I can't use aol im. I dont think att has the rights to it. Blackberries have the software ready for it to download, but att has it locked or something. I think tmobile has the rights to it or something. I may be wrong, probably am wrong, but Im just annoyed I dont have the iphone in my hands. I check out gizmodo, engadget, cnet, howardforums every day and Im getting frustrated. I think apple will delay shipments for online orders because they dont want to overflow the att network. Less people on it, less probs i guess. Apple said in an email that july 4th id receive an email update about shipping but cmon already, why not send the damn thing out considering yall def have millions of these things sitting in some warehouse in tennessee or somewhere.
Odd, in the group of 3 of my friends none of us had any problems. Our iPhones were activated immediately. 2 of us had Cingular contracts and one switched from T-mobile..no problems.
Were you guys switching from like blackberry? what company did you switch from?
Would be interesting to see if there are any relations.
I was a Cingular customer (non-corporate) for three years, I can't activate iPhone for 3rd day in a row, very little actual help from the company.
Argh.
I feel your pain. I too am waiting from ordering it online.
Ugh.
Lies. 50+ hours and waiting. ATT is lying. We're 3 for 8 after the entire weekend.
Severus, tell us how you really feel.
I have to say I waited a very long time for activation, but the reps were really nice. After about 10 hours of waiting, I called and was like "This isn't going to fly". So they transferred to another dept that deleted everything and manually set my account up by hand over the phone. I then plugged the iphone in and it worked. I think looking at the sheer volume of people activating these devices is really important and if there are small fuck-ups, I guess thats just part of having a cooler device than anyone else. I have pretty much owned every type of phone there is, and they all bow down to the iphone. Yes, I know there is no aim client and it can't copy and paste, yet when I use it. I see all of the other amazing features and coolness that makes it what it is.
Oh dear, some AT&T employee who designed the server farms isn't going to get a good performance review for this year. They'll probably stone him to death with Cisco routers.
58 hours and counting....
No activation.
65 hours here (since 7:30 PM on Friday)
That's strange... when I buy a phone from Verizon, it's just activated. The second I open it. Sucks for you guys!
Someone here is on crack, and it's not me. If anything, AT&T is the fly-by-night company, going by their actions during the iPhone launch.
just got my iphone this morning and it took all of 5 minutes to port my number from t-mobile and the trick from apple insider really helped cause if i did not know about that i feel i would be in the same boat as the people who have waited 36+ hours
61.5 hours....
I do feel like a horse's ass.
I dealt with this whole issue and there is 1 key here. DON'T GET OFF THE PHONE WITH THEM.
When they tell you to wait and call back -- Don't
After waiting 24 hours, they told me to wait 72 hours and call back, so I freaked out at them, surprise surprise, phone is activated 5 minutes later.
THEY CAN FIX IT.
It is not a server issue.
Just be a huge nag and you won't have to wait any longer.
They told me I've got to TURN OFF my current phone, which I'm transferring number from to iP, so they can throw the number around.
It's bloody nightmare.
Too bad I can't look at any other phone any longer, or I would switch to Verizon already :)
My family got 2 iphones. The first was a nightmare to activate. It was bought on Friday evening and wouldnt activate for almost 40 hours. I called so many AT&T reps and they would disagree with what each other thought about my account. Some thought my account should've activated and some insisted that I needed a new number. No matter what company you called--At&T, Apple, or T-Mobile(my former carrier), they all tried passing the blame to one of the others. This was one of the worst experiences with a company I have ever had. Finally I got it to work. I had to ultimately fool the system into thinking I was an existing AT&T customer replacing my phone. The second iPhone was purchased yesterday and activated within 1 minute so I guess they did something in that time period. I was extremely surprised about how flawlessly the second one worked. Now that I've been using it, I think it really is the greatest gadget I have ever used. It's smaller than one would imagine, internet on Wi-fi is ultra fast, internet on EDGE is nowhere near as bad as people made it out to be, the camera's pictures are extremely clear, and the keyboard took me only about 30 minutes to get used to. Most importantly it's easy and extremely fun to use. Can't wait till we get some software updates to increase its functionality to its maximum potential.
What I don't understand is why wasn't this surge of activations anticipated? Why wasn't an AT&T rep onsite at the apple store to assist with the activations? Would that have helped any? I wasn't anywhere near a mall or an AT&T on Friday and I'm too broke to even think about a $500 phone. :)
You are not alone :D
"AT&T made technical adjustments to its activation system so that new users wouldn't face the same delays"...
What utter and complete BS.