IMessage won't activate my phone number

So, after trying EVERYTHING and still get nothing, I searched a bit in the official Apple site and found this: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2755 .

iPhone automatically registers your phone number for use with iMessage during activation. If you encounter issues activating or using iMessage with your phone number:

• Verify that you are connected to a cellular network.
• Toggle iMessage off and on in Settings > Messages.
• If you are unable to activate iMessage on a device after remote wiping it, wait at least 24 hours and try again.

So, yesterday i switched iMessage & FaceTime off all day long, and today I turned them on, waited a bit (~1 minute) and everything was activated.

I hope this works well for anybody who has the same problem as I had (and was VERY disturbing).

My iMessage has been turned off since yesterday. A few minutes ago I thought I'd try again... so I turned it back on and it asked me to login. I pressed cancel and it worked! It says receiving at my number again. Try it.

I have tried everything!!!!!

I've been here for hours restoring, switching things on and off, etc, etc. At one point, iMessage didn't even work from my email. Now, it's back to my email and stuck "verifying" my phone number, leaving that option grayed out.

I am in Canada for the week, do you think that has anything to do with it? It was working with my phone number just fine yesterday and up until a few hours ago.

HELP!!! Please!!!!

For all of you where iMessage and FaceTime works for your apple ID but not with your mobile number (to be used as caller ID) where it gets stuck at "waiting for activation" message, check-out the if your have updated your current mobile number in correct format in the Apple ID account in web-site under the "Mobile phone" tab..

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3067990?answerId=18297608022#18297608022

I have the same problem. All I did was turn iMessage off and then back on and now it fails to verify the phone number. Still works off of the email address in my apple id but that's not good enough. It's was working fine since the day iOS 5 was released.

I've read countless forums and tried a thousand things but nothing seems to solve this problem. Here's a list of the things I've tried:

• Checked Settings > Phone > My Number and changed it from having the + country code to without and back
• Reset Network Settings
• Reset All Settings
• Ensured Date and Time is set to auto
• Ensured that Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendars > My Info points to my card (and have deleted the card completely and re-added it)
• Ensured my card in contacts has my phone number under the iPhone category
• Restored the OS entirely and recovered from a backup
• Added 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 to the DNS settings of my wifi connection
• Tried activate via 3G instead of wifi
• Removed sim card, inserted and rebooted
• Rebooted a thousand times
• Toggled all options under Settings > Messages back and forth, several times (including signing in and out of apple id)
• Removed and added my phone number to my Apple Id account via web interface
• Changed my Apple ID password
• Tried disabling and re-enabling FaceTime (which doesn't seem to authorise now either)

And there are probably more things I've tried than this that don't come to mind right now.

My last resort was to walk into the store I bought the phone from where they said "er....... what er..... yeah probably an apple problem just er.... wait for a patch" without even attempting to offer any kind of troubleshooting advice whatsoever. There is no Apple store in my city either so no genius bar to go to.

HELP! Apple? Anyone?

No I haven't. I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to do that as it's a real pain to have to go though and tweak everything the way I want it.

It's seeming increasingly likely that I will have to do that but I wanted to make sure I'd exhausted every other option first because if that doesn't work, then I'll have to waste even more time setting everything back up.

It puzzles me to no end why and how this happened in the first place and was hopeful Apple may have another solution.

Kelsey12,

Funny you mention that, I'm with Telstra too! My sister (who's with Vodafone) had the same problem after going overseas and once we fixed her Settings > Phone > My Number entry (which had changed to an overseas number), it activated right away!

I have read a number of posts that say that the activation process is handled behind the scenes by sending a text message to the carrier which then responds but I don't know if that's actually what happens or if it only happens with certain carriers. To test this theory I went to two Telstra shops this morning. Both were useless and didn't take any interest in the problem, although the second said that I wasn't the first customer to come in with the problem today.

I'm in Adelaide so no Genius bar to go to. Please let us know how you go!

I'm with Telstra too!

I switched mine off yesterday and only just thought to turn it back on, and no matter what I try, it just WILL NOT come back on, and it is frustrating me like you wouldn't believe.

I'd say so, I'm about ready to rip out an abusive call to either apple support or Telstra.

Neither of them are any help with any other problems with ANYTHING I've needed.

So if they're unable to help with this, all sorts of things are going to hit the fan lol.

I'm having this exact issue...

Was running an iPhone 3GS with iOS 5.0.1 and iMessages were working fine.

Two days ago bought a second hand iPhone 4 from a friend. Did a full factory reset on it so I could start with a clean phone.

Cannot get iMessages to work... it sits there saying "Waiting for Activation"

It will work via my Apple ID, but not my phone number.

I've tried everything listed in this thread plus a few things I found on google not listed here.

Rang Apple Support and they talked me through a number of things to try... after a 45 min call they escallated me and that person said "the iMessage server is down at the moment".

Um, really? Wouldn't they have known about that sooner?

Why would it still work for a friend who already has iMessages set up under his phone number, yet I cannot "activate" my number with iMessage?

*sigh*

For what it's worth, I'm with Telstra in Adelaide, SA.

Yeah if the iMessage 'server' was down I kinda get the feeling that the chatter on the web would be a little bit louder than it is right now! It's not even feasible to believe that Apple's iMessage 'verification' system (in whatever form it may be) is down given that I've seen at least one activation (on Vodafone) work perfectly since mine (Telstra) went bad.

Antman, would you care to brifely list the 'few things on google' that you tried which weren't listed here?

Tried changing auto-update of date/time settings

Changing my number from starting with +61 to 0 and back again in phone settings

Ensuring my contact details were set under Settings > Contacts > My Details

Flight mode on/off

iMessage on/off

Facetime on/off

Factory reset

Soft reset / hard reset

Reset network settings

The following test I would LOVE to perform...

Someone currently on Telstra with iMessage enabled - toggle off, then on. Does it work?

Someone currently on any other network with iMessage enabled - toggle off, then on. Does it work?

From my understanding - existing phone numbers already verified with iMessage work fine.

New activations / verifications are failing... but is this CARRIER dependant?!?

Come on Apple, if I can do this sort of diagnosis on my own while working 60+ hour weeks.... surely YOU can sort it out soon?!?! 🙂