Unable to activate eSIM of Airtel on IPhone 13 running on iOS 16.0.2

Hi Nicky, the issue is with iOS. I had issue with airtel eSIM activation. Once you scan the eSIM code it would take few minutes to show you message like unable to activate. once you see this message, wait for two hours or three hours. You should loose the signals on your old phone which was having physical sim or eSim. Then come to you new phone and turn off the line and turn it on. You should get the signals on your new phone. That’s how the work around as of now, until apple address the issue. May be service providers can’t help you out. Hope this should help you.

I faced the same issue. I waited till the physical SIM go de-activated, waited for around half hour more and then re-started my iPhone. (Waited for 2.5 hrs from receiving QR code).

The eSIM signal bars did not turn up before I turned-off my phone. It immediately appeared on restarting the device.

No one at the Airtel store new about this. I got this idea only by visiting this forum page.

This discussion did help me to resolve the problem. Airtel way of QR code scanning do come with an error “unable to active sim, contact your carrier for assistance” but I ignored it and waited for 2 and half hours and then restarted the phone to turn off the line and turn on the line in settings then it started functioning.

Okay.. so update regarding this issue, I carried on with esim process after the pop up of unable to activate esim. I turned on and off the esim, it started working! I hope this bug will be resolved in next software update.

Quick update! Tried the steps suggested by everyone and it worked! ESim has gotten activated! Here are few pointers.

• scan the QR code immediately
• try scanning the code from far so the entire code gets captured rather than a portion
• have your physical sim on a different phone
• wait for 2 hours
• ignore the unable to activate message
• don’t fiddle with the phones and just let them be
• after 2 hours turn the eSim profile off and on

thanks to all the reviews and comments people gave it was so comforting and reassuring and really guided me well!

Okay so I have an update as well. I converted my SIM to postpaid and did the eSIM process all over again. I was told to ignore the error message and wait for 2 hours. The network signal disappeared from my other phone which had my physical SIM. I then restarted my 14 Pro and voila! My eSIM was activated.

I have been struggling to convert my Airtel SIM to eSIM for quite some time. On every attempt, I had to cancel the process after receiving the 'Unable to activate eSIM. Your eSIM could not be activated. Contact AirTel for assistance' error. Even got the physical SIM deactivated on couple of occasions. However, today I let the process continue even after receiving the error message. And after about 2 hours of waiting, the eSIM got activated and both the physical SIM as well as the eSIM are active now. I can now remove the physical SIM and replace it with my other carrier SIM - Finally!

Go through the eSIM activation process and ignore the message that shows "unable to activate eSIM" by just pressing okay and wait for 2 hrs. It'll activate exactly after 2 hrs. SMS services will be blocked for 24 hrs for security reasons but you can make calls!

I’ve done this with two Airtel sims. On an iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. It worked on one phone but not another. The difference eventually was the wifi. It only worked if I connected to a hotspot to another phone and did the activation. Activation failed when I was connected to the wifi.

it looks like issue with country origin for devices buyed from US and activating sim in India.

I activated after changing country origin of apple id to india. able to activate sim after two hours.

try with changing apple id country origin to India

Guys, I faced the same issue on iPhone 14 pro bought from the US. Airtel esim was not getting added. It always says esim unsupported with the "cancel" and "try again" options.

As all suggest try after 2 hours it will start working automatically. But it was not even getting installed by scanning QR.

So I used a trick given in a few replies. I disconnected by 14 pro from wifi and connected with the hotspot of an old phone. The esim got installed without any error. After 2 hours it starts working.

Hopefully, this comment helps any of you guys. (I will suggest when you scan QR while connected to a hotspot please make sure you request for new QR code, sometimes already scanned QR code doesn't work even on a hotspot connection)

This worked for me :

go to settings and click on your eSIM. You would then get an option to Turn OFF and then Turn ON the eSIM.

it immediately activated my Airtel eSIM on iPhone 13 - iOS 16.0.2.

I had same issue. But then i ignored the error message of unsuccessful eSim activation and waited for 2 hrs from receiving Qr code. Then I turned off and on eSIM and it will work.

Same as several others, after 3 failed tries, ignored 'Your eSIM could not be activated.' with 4th try. Almost exactly 2 hours later, physical SIM was out of service (Deactivated) and eSIM was working without doing anything. Airtel's system works but the information/description in SMS, email and web site is incorrect or out-of-date, which I cannot comprehand how it could happen.