Facetime Overseas

It was a poor connection/firewalling. Once provisioned, Facetime works fine via Wifi.

When you activate Facetime, depending on the carrier (in the UK they use SMS, for example, while in the US/AT&T it seems they use some other back channel that is more invisible) Facetime registers your phone number as stored in the phone with the Apple servers that implement face time.

When your phone is on and connected to wifi, and facetime is enabled, the facetime app registers for push notifications from that apple server. If someone "calls" you on facetime, they are really connecting to that server, which looks up your phone number, and then sees if your phone is registered as currently on/available, and if so sends a push notification. All that communication is done via wifi/internet not GSM or SMS, and of course the above description is greatly simplified, but in a nutshell that's what happens. It will work in airplane mode, as long as you are on wifi and have already registered, so NO cell connection is used or needed.

If you change your number, for example, you need to turn off facetime, reboot the phone, and then turn on facetime again. That does the whole "register this phone number with the Apple server" step over. Otherwise, your facetime won't receive calls, and calls you make will show the old number 🙂

So just to follow up, the pop-up dialogue that says "caller would like to FaceTime" that allows the recipient to accept or decline the call basically IS an SMS that opens within the FT app, but it transmits via wi-fi, only.

Hence it won't use AT&T data lines (3G or EDGE) to initiate a FT call (or to receive a FT request), and thus you WON'T be charged from your SMS monthly allotment (if you don't have unlimited messaging plan).

BTW, Airplane Mode disables ALL radios on the iPhone (i.e. the GSM radio used for voice, as well as the data radio, whether you're using wi-fi or 3G). Therefore, you cannot initiate or accept a FT call when you're in Airplane Mode (which makes sense, of course: the whole point of Airplane Mode is to disable ALL reception/transmission of radio signals).

In the case Airplane Mode is enabled and a caller attempts to initiate FT with the iPhone, the initiator will receive the "caller is not available for FT" error message after a minute or so (i.e. call failure is not instant). This is identical to what happens when the iPhone is out of wi-fi range, or when wi-fi is disabled (but 3G is on), or iPhone is turned off. When the recipient turns the phone back on, etc, they'll have a pop-up message notifying them of a missed FT call.

You can turn wifi on after you enable airplane mode. Sorry for the confusion, I meant that facetime works in this mode, obviously.

"the call basically IS an SMS that opens within the FT app, but it transmits via wi-fi, only" - that's a more confused way of saying FT registers for Notification 🙂

hi, i have tried to connect to facetime. before this i'm using other sim card from different service provider and it works well. but when i change to my primary number from different service provider, it just state "waiting for activation" for ages. is there any restriction on some service provider who cannot get into FaceTime server? FYI, i'm from malaysia and my country don't block FaceTime.

Thanks