Your Activation Requires Additional Time to Complete

I'm a current AT&T former Cingular customer. I've been a customer since 1993. I've been waiting over 3 hours for activation. This should have been expected and the issues should have been resolved.

My previous phone was disconnected, so after 2 hours of no phone, I took the sim card from the iPhone and stuck it in my Blackberry. At least I have a working phone now until the iPhone is activated.

Very frustrating.

Switching just one of my family plan #s from Verizon... also got the 24 hour message and called the number it gave to make "other arrangements" which was AT&T

The girl there seemed annoyed that they told us to call there, as she claimed there is nothing they can do to expedite the number transfer and she told me to call Verizon.

Verizon's rep said the account did not show that they've rec'd the "port request" to transfer the number yet. So I'm waiting.

I clicked the FAQ and it says I should be able to access other features but I can't -- just the Emergency Call -- so I called the iPhone support line 877/419-4500 and got a recording that they have "TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES"

6+ hours of waiting in line... what's 24 more!

AT&T Email: Phone service is scheduled to be disconnected on your current phone at or after 7:50 PM EDT on June 30.

AT or AFTER!

I called the activation help line and spoke with a very friendly and helpful Caroline. She said that for existing AT&T customers porting a number, it would take 3-5 hours. If you were porting a number from another service, it could take up to 24 (this is the same case if you are transferring a number from another service with a conventional phone, BTW).

If you are getting a new number, regardless of whether to are an existing customer or not, activation is almost immediate.

The bottleneck is the result of porting all of the existing users' SIM cards. Normally, they just transfer the SIM card to another phone, or the data another card. To her credit, she acknowledged that they were caught off-guard by that.

It appears to be an honest stumble – which is to be expected with a product launch of this scale – and the AT&T people are doing the best they can to resolve it.

If anyone deserves scorn, it's Apple. Why does using widgets, music, video, and wi-fi internet access functionality require phone activation from AT&T?

For many, myself included, the phone features were secondary to "everything I've wanted in a PDA." The PDA/Video iPod alone is worth the $600 price, IMO. Why force me to spend $720/year to boot to use it?

As a longtime ATT user- I left a couple years ago to Cingular to get away from them- I knew ATT was going to be the weak link in this. All the hype, and all the time they had to get prepared for this, and now I have no phone service. Apple is also to blame because they should have made sure that ATT had the infrastructure in place for what they knew, and were banking on was going to be a huge introduction. I am out of service ad waiting now for 2-1/2 hrs. At least it is friday pm, and I am expecting no business calls, and have to make none- Could it be that was the reason for introducing this on the friday pm before the holiday, to mitigate the damage ATT could do? hmmm?.

Got iPhone, preapproved credit. They forgot to give me the confirmation number. I call the store and the salesman is very helpful in giving me the new number, however, it's 14 digits that he gives me. iTunes wants 9, 12, or 13. I give my SSN for the credit check (2 credit checks in one day is a ding on your credit report), now I too have been waiting for activation since 8:45. Still no word! I am transferring from Sprint. It tells me that I have to wait 24 hours, which is BS...

I got the same message. Called in as well! This was an hour and a half ago....they also said it could be up to 24 hours. The website for iphone help says up to two days. This is bad because this is my only phone. I can no longer make any calls!

Same here Jeremy..

I also read this..stuff

When will my iPhone be active?
Your iPhone will be ready as soon as you sign up with AT&T and complete the activation process. If you are signing up for new service and you select a new AT&T mobile phone number, your iPhone may be ready to receive phone calls in just minutes. If you transfer an existing AT&T mobile phone number, it may take a few hours to receive calls. And if you transfer a number from another carrier or from a land line, it may take longer. While waiting for that process to complete, you can make calls but not receive them. You will receive email status updates and an SMS text message when the transfer is complete.

this really is ridiculous! I activated my phone in the first hour of the first time zone they became available in, and still waiting at 10pm. Hopefully I'll wake up in the morning with a working iPhone.

I am pretty irritated as well. I hung out in a mall for 11 hours only to have a shiny new iBrick that I can't use at all.

i can't make calls "while waiting for the process to complete"... can anyone else? my iBrick says "no service" instead of showing signal bars. my blackberry is sitting right next to it, and while the SIM is "rejected" i can see service bars...

how about ya'll?

Has ANYONE received an email that their activation has been completed? Or is this a situation where you can just forget about it until 24 hours from initiation?

i unplugged my iphone and plugged it back in because a message came up saying my activation had expired. as soon as i plugged it back in my phone activated. hope this works for you too.

Received the "Your activation takes additional time to complete" message as the last step in itunes activation. Got a nearly instantaneous email from the iTunes store that "AT&T is now processing your activation. You will receive an email confirmation once your activation is complete." I'm a several year cingular customer with a family plan. Email came at 9:02 PM EST. Still no love here at 10:23 PM EST.

ATT really dropped the ball on this. They clearly don't get the out of box experience and don't want to. I've owned Macs since 1986 but have never had this kind of anticipation followed by such disappointment. I place this squarely in ATT's lap.

Ok, here is what was told to me by, what I believe is a very intelligent rep...
iPhone is having some issues 🙂

Xferring Current Cingular Number: Having issues transferring the 'Data' Plans to your existing plan is causing the delay in activation since the SIM card & IMEI number are transferring to the account.

The call center taking those support calls had their switchboard crash due to how many calls are coming in. It's working now... but hold times are LONG and at one point, stopped taking additional calls.

He said that it could be until tomorrow sometime when all the phones are activated.

There were 4 different computer crashes at 6-6:30 tonight too.... Including some on the store level (which happened at my store).