iPhone RCS activation stuck after T-Mobile outage
After the T-Mobile outage on 7/27 here in the US, all of my services restored except for RCS.
Ever since then, it's just been stuck on "Waiting for Activation." When I check my IMS Status (Settings → General → About), it only shows Voice & SMS. No RCS.
At this point, I've tried just about every trick I've found on Reddit and elsewhere.
- Turn off Wi-Fi, turn off RCS, wait 10 seconds, turn RCS back on.
- Turn off RCS, turn on Airplane Mode, wait a minute, turn Airplane Mode back off, wait 30 seconds, turn RCS back on.
- Hard restart the phone.
- Reset Network Settings.
Nothing.
Then I called T-Mobile. They told me the wait would be about 30 minutes. I ended up sitting on hold for 2 hours and 38 minutes, only for them to have me go through all the troubleshooting I'd already explained I had done.
Then they had me remove my eSIM, reprovisioned it on their end, and... still nothing.
Next it was, "Wait an hour and we'll call you back."
Nothing.
Then it became, "Wait 24 hours and we'll call you tomorrow."
I'm coming up on that 24-hour mark now, and it's still doing the exact same thing. I'm assuming the next step is going to be, "We'll put in a ticket..."
Before my next step becomes more waiting, I figured I'd ask here.
Has anyone else with an iPhone experienced this after the outage? If you got it fixed, what finally did it? What am I missing?
iPhone 17 Pro Max, iOS 26