Iphone 3G no service

Holy crap! Same exact problem! I even tried what you did and got the same "restricted" message. And guess what...it started happening the same day, august 7th. Im currently on Rogers. Completly different network and country. I wonder if this has anything to do with hardware.

Anyways I didn't call Rogers for that because there's already a replacement on its way because of a dead pixel.

Really annoying can't make or receive calls...

Yes, it is indeed the sim card. Because I tried what you did and got the same results.

I finally got my replacement phone and to my surprise, I got a new sim card (still in its package) with it even though Rogers told me to keep my old sim. I put the new sim in my new iPhone, activate it and tadam, it works...

I think it had something to do with the fact that I was receiving a new iPhone. Maybe they disabled my old sim but thats trouble for nothing because I couldve kept my old one...I guess they were afraid i'd return everything...(Some people are stupid lol). But because of that I couldn't use my phone for the weekend that sucked.

As for you alindsay81, I don't know why they disabled your sim...

this "problem" is happening all over the world

google, or search here for "iphone 3g reception problems"

Take it back to Apple!

Hi alindsay81,

I have been having the same problem. The iPhone states 'No Service' in the top left hand corner and comes up with a error message that states...

"Restricted Network
Your selected cellular network is restricted. You can choose a different network in Settings."

It then offers you the choice of dismissing the message or going to settings and getting a list of providers, which is rather insulting as you are only stuck with one provider anyway, which it will not let you on.

Thankfully I have two 3G iPhones and swapped the working iPhone sim into the the non-working iPhone and I got a signal and O2-UK (3G) service straight away. I then put the non-working SIM in the working iPhone and received no signal. Therefore it is not the hardware that is faulty but the SIM or O2's handling of the account.

I have contacted O2 on two occasions now and have received promises that they will fix the issue on their end, but this fix has yet to occur.

I have had a resolution.

The issue was neither the SIM card or the iPhone but O2's handling of my account. Apparently the information they have about me and my iPhone number is held in two databases, a central database that handles the phone network and a customer database that holds my details. My mobile number was not the same in both databases and would not sync and so the customer services people I talked to, at great length, once in an O2 shop for half an hour, could not see why I had no connection as they thought everything was fine from the information they were shown. Whilst the network database did not recognise my number as an O2 number. It was only when my issue was passed to a 'tier 2' technical support person that my problem was quickly resolved.

I got two weeks credit on my bill too for the inconvenience. 🙂

For future reference -

It is possible that when the iPhone or any other cell phone loses it's signal because of a low signal that when it re-enters a stronger signal space, the phone will continue to show no signal. What you need to do in those situations is to shut your phone down and turn it back on so that the your iPhone can acquire a signal.

Again, this happens to all cells, including the iPhone, you should not have had to use iTunes or any other method.

I hate to disappoint all of you, guys, but the problem described apparently has nothing to do with SIM-cards, carriers, etc etc. Why I think so? Because I happen to be a Belgian (Europe) iPhone owner, on a Belgian network/carrier and experienced the very same problem today.
Everything went absolutely fine from day 1 when I bought my iPhone3G (July 11th) until yesterday's trip to Paris (France). In France, the iPhone took quite a while to connect to a French carrier network, but it did successfully. Once back in Belgium (Brussels), the No Service - restricted network problem occurred. Nothing seems to work so far (switching the iPhone off-on, restoring it,...) HELP!!
It must be an iPhone software problem, I guess...