unlocking service ill not help you. you will pay 160 USD for nothing. this is the problem with apple database. so now only call to apple may help. or we can wait ios updating but there is no any confirmation that this bug will be solved.

Apple does Care a lot really please follow these steps, which i copied and pasted from one of the people in this discussion and i also followed it and it worked for me. If you really paid full price for your product apple will solve the problem. From Egypt

Here are only the steps, send it to support@apple.com at least:

So what I did, and what I suggest you do too:

- send an email to the above recipients explaining the problem, that you bought an iPhone for the full price of 649$ + taxes (for the 16GB model), and that you specifically asked for it to be used in another country with another carrier;

- write that after you got in your home country you have the SMS problem;

- thus no iMessange and no FaceTime

- provide them all the details about the phone: Model, Serial Number, IMEI, MEID, your phone number (at which you can be contacted);

- tell them that the email address with which the iPhone is associated in iTunes;

- try to send the email from the email address with which the iPhone is associated;

- if you can attach also a photo of the receipt, that would be great, the receipt has the Model and the

Serial number of the phone, so you are very credibile in this;

- if you can provide also the name of the store where it was bought.

After the mail with the above details I got contacted the second day and the third day the problem was solved

ok, so after a few days of mailing i got contacted the 3rd day and in the 5th day its finally fixed. apple do care

Problem solved as well

Hi shay1234 and Plka91,

Great news! Can you please share your case id's to maybe help other users with same problem?

Thanks...

Good News's everyone

Today Tim Cook's executive office called me regarding the mail I sent last week and they advised me to run a restore via iTunes did that got the unlock message and EVERYTHING WORKS FINE HERE !!!! finally !!!

my case number is

<edited by host>

good luck to you all

and mine is <edited by host>

I neede solution for 2 iphones. the first one is working, but without congratulations message. but the second one not. i did all the same as with first iphone. any idea?

Hola

I received a call this afternoon from apple Ireland. I was charing a meeting but I could not not to answer her. She wanted to follow the steps with me but she felt I was not comfortable so she offered to email me the instructions.

I couldnt wait till reached home and opened her email. I was really shocked!

There was not any steps. She only asked me to erase all contents from settings and then activating from itunes.

I was so mad as this was not the common solution everybody had from here.

Then said lets try it and yes EVERYTHING WAS SOLVED

No restore at all

Just erase and activate

I think the problem was from wireless activations and that we needed to activate through itunes!!

I activated mine without iTunes with the same instructions as yours are.

Well, finally my Sprint iPhone 5 is working fine, sending SMS...

Now I'm not sure what have fixed, but I believe Apple has changed something. I sent the e-mail few days ago but didn't receive any answer yet from them.

Today, I'm not sure why, I try to do a restore directly from the iPhone, I have used the option "Erase ALL content and adjusts" and after I configured the iPhone again, it works fine.

Maybe someone can test it, because I had not used this option before.

Well, I believe that if you have not sent any e-mail to Apple yet, you can try doing this.

Use the option ERASE ALL CONTENT activate the iPhone again.

Let us know if works fine. Because I believe the Apple Support has not done anything on my device.

YES!!! Today i've got a call from Apple with the instructions to restore the phone thru the iTunes! After typical restoring procedure i've got a message in iTunes "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked"

Immediatly i tried to send test sms meassage and... it worked!!!! Yes! now my sms, imessage and facetime working like a charm! Apple did it! )))

P.S. Серёга, не переживай! Я тоже русский, из Москвы, и у меня получилось решить проблему - звони в их поддержку, бомби письмами, у меня это заняло 5 дней ежедневных звонков и спама)))

AWESUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

so great to see that gradually all problems are being resolved.....

on reading the forums, i see that now people dont even have to wait for apple to contact you, just erase all data and when you restore it just gets activated!!!!

EITHER WAY WELCOME ALL TO THE WORLD OF SMS/iMESSAGING and FACE TIME...........

GOOD LUCK TO ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is not that simple erasing the phone data to solve the problem. Restoring function thru the iTunes is the last step after some mystical manipulation in the database by Apple tech guys in each case.

I didnt have or asked by apple to restore. Just erase and activate through itunes!!!