iMessage activation error

SOLVED! At last!

I had this for two days on my Mac (but not my iPhone or iPad), and my wife had it on here iPhone and iPad after updating to IOS 16.3.1.

I tried ALL the solutions suggested on many websites. Including at least an hour with Apple Support and at least 90 minutes with my mobile carrier, including multiple phone resets and multiple Apple ID password resets.

And here is the ONLY solution that finally worked:

I went out of my house, and I connected wires iPhone to a DIFFERENT WiFi network (local coffee shop), not my home router, and suddenly I was able to activate perfectly. I then proceeded to do the same for my MacBook Pro.

When I got home I mimicked this with my iPad, by changing wifi from my home router to tethered via my iPhone. I was then also able to immediately activate iMessage and FaceTime on my iPad.

After that, I reconnected WiFi on all my devices to my home router, and both iMessage and FaceTime work perfectly.

Here is what I think was happening... I suspect that my home router and/or ISP was blocking a port that is particularly needed for activation but not needed for subsequent operation).

So, once iMessage and FaceTime were one-time activated OFF my home network (on an alternate network), they now both work fine again all of the time on any network (including my home network).

I hope this is helpful for everyone else, and saves you hours of bouncing between Apple and your Carrier, and the pin of password and phone resets (the latter of which are particularly painful because if you use any high security apps like banking apps you will need to reauthenticate your hardware with them).

Love you you all folks.

Dave

naim30 wrote:

Hi!

I have recently ported my sim operator and after that my iMessage is not working and showing the following message all the time. “An error occurred during iMessage activation”. Although I’m getting all the sms and otp messages in my phone. But could not activated my iMessage anyway. I’ve reset my network settings several times and logged out and in iCloud id several times. But didn’t work. I’ve also manually turned off and on iMessage and FaceTime for many times. And now I’m helpless to activate my iMessage service.

If you can’t turn on or sign in to iMessage or FaceTime - Apple Support

naim30 wrote:

I’m being able to send messages through iMessage from my other sim card and iCloud id. But only being failed to send iMessage from the sim I have ported.

click and follow the steps in the blue link, that I posted in my original response, talk to your new phone carrier.