sunny416
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Wind Mobile Activate iMessage / Facetime

iPhone 5 AWS

 

 

Cannot activate imessage and facetime with my phone number on Wind Mobile here in Canada. I have international text and it still wont activate. Wind Mobile doesnt carry the iPhone. I thought any carrier can get imessage??

iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.4, AWS

Posted on Jul 17, 2013 6:44 PM

by smcclay,Solvedanswer
smcclay smcclay
Level 1 (25 points)
A:

I am a Wind Mobile customer in Canada, and I found out what the problem is.

 

The process Apple uses is as follows:

 

When you turn iMessage on, the iPhone sends a text message to Apple. It will go to one of several numbers in the UK. When Apple gets the message, they generate a response. This response uses something called Application Port Addressing to direct the message to a specific process running on the phone.

 

The only way to see these messages is to dump your baseband logs. Apple has instructions for doing this on their developer site under bug reporting.

 

The initial problem with Wind Mobile was you would never see the reply message from Apple. One could login to myAccount on the Wind site and check their usage and only see the outgoing messages. This recently changed, and at least for me, I started seeing the reply from Apple. Still, no iMessage activation with phone number.

 

In the iPhone baseband logs, the SMS messages can be read in PDU format. This is basically just a HEX representation of the message with some other data about how it should be delivered and where it came from. There are several online decoders that can interpret the message and give you something readable. Decoding the SMS PDU that came from Apple showed that something was wrong with it. After some minor manipulation of 2 of the fields in the PDU, the problem turned out to be with the encoding bit for the USER DATA of message. It was set to 8 bit and should have been 7 bit. Because of this problem, the length bit for the USER DATA was also wrong, as you can fit more data in the same number of bytes using septets than you can with octets. After changing these two bits, the online decoders displayed the correct message.

 

Where does this data change? Hard to say. We have to assume that Apple sends it correctly. Therefore it must be getting corrupt somewhere between Apple and the iPhone on Wind's network. There are applications called SMPP gateways that allow messages to be sent across networks. I suspect the problem is with one of these.

 

Can this be worked around without the help of Wind? The short answer is yes, but it's complicated. You can take the corrupt message from the baseband logs, reformat it as an SMS Submit PDU, and send it to your iPhone's phone number.

 

This requires that you have another phone with a working SIM that can be used as a GSM modem. Not all phones have this capability. I used an old Nokia 5230. I was able to plug it in to my Mac and used the Shareware app ZTerm to send AT commands to it. I sent the re-formulated response message from Apple to my iPhone number via the old Nokia and now iMessage works with my phone number on Wind. I then did the same for my wife's iPhone and now hers works as well.

 

After going through this process, who do I point the finger at? I point it squarely at Wind. It is their responsibilty to ensure a message that uses Application Port Addressing is not corrupted on their network.

Posted on Jan 25, 2014 8:58 AM

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sunny416

Q: Wind Mobile Activate iMessage / Facetime

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  • by dominique99,

    dominique99 dominique99 Jul 1, 2014 11:41 AM in response to slicko666
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2014 11:41 AM in response to slicko666

    Hi Slicko,

     

    Don't know for sure if this will help, but what I did as part of my prep for activation was set my iPhone # and my Apple ID to my phone number preceded by +1 --

    e.g., +1 ( 555) 1234. Adding +1 merely identifies your number as being in North America, and since activation is coming from an Apple server in the U.K., I figured it couldn't hurt to tell it your in North America. (Note that Apple adds +1 to most of your NA contacts automatically when you open FaceTime and click on a contact name, you'll see a +1 in front of their phone number -- at least that's the case for me. This is so even though I only entered them with area codes and local number in the Contacts app, and that's how they still show there. You can check this by running FaceTime even though you're not activated yet, choosing different contacts and checking the phone number. I bet most of them have +1 in front of them..)

     

    Like I said, not sure if it will solve your problem -- but it's one of the many tweaks I made before finally getting activation to work when using: http://www.theonlinemac.com/wind

  • by dominique99,

    dominique99 dominique99 Jul 1, 2014 11:58 AM in response to slicko666
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2014 11:58 AM in response to slicko666

    Slicko,

     

    Try adding +1 before your phone number on both the iPhone and your Apple ID. This is one of the tweaks I did before finally getting activation to work through the website: http://www.theonlinemac.com/wind


    +1 simply means you have a North American number -- which I figure can't hurt since the Apple activation server is in the U.K.


    Sorry for duplication of post -- my original one didn't show for 10 min. so I reposted, then it showed up. Can't delete this; only edit.

  • by mistry121,

    mistry121 mistry121 Jul 1, 2014 12:47 PM in response to dominique99
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2014 12:47 PM in response to dominique99

    Hey dominique,

     

    I'm having the exact same problem as slicko (cannot find the GSM SMS Point to Point PDU (as hex str):) and I tried your method with no luck. I've honestly tried everything like creating a new apple ID, resetting the iphone, using facetime instead of imessage but nothing seems to work. If anyone has anyone has any luck please post here with steps as it would be greatly appreciated. My number has been ported from fido 10 months ago in case anyone was wondering and I'm on the wind 30 (pay after). Thanks guys.

  • by hkhan83,

    hkhan83 hkhan83 Jul 1, 2014 3:05 PM in response to dominique99
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2014 3:05 PM in response to dominique99

    Hi All,

     

    I am having the same problem as slicko. What do you mean by adding the +1 in the apple id? I have done it on my phone under "My Number," but when I go to appleid.apple.com to see details of my apple id, it does not let me add +1. Thanks

  • by 2cx,

    2cx 2cx Jul 1, 2014 9:13 PM in response to hkhan83
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2014 9:13 PM in response to hkhan83

    i am facing the same problem, i am able to get to my logs but cant find the point to point, in my previous phone imessage/facetime was working flawlessly but after i updated to 64 gigs iphone os version 7.1.2 i am not able to find point to point any where in the logs.

  • by canadian2012,

    canadian2012 canadian2012 Jul 2, 2014 11:40 AM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 2, 2014 11:40 AM in response to sunny416

    Hi all,

     

    I'm curious; what exactly is included in these 'activation messages' apart from our phone numbers? Is it just a random one-time cookie or is our phone's IMEI or some kind of usage statistics or other personal information in there as well?

  • by slicko666,

    slicko666 slicko666 Jul 2, 2014 2:24 PM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 2, 2014 2:24 PM in response to sunny416

    393.498 sms: Composing SMS message using GsmModel

    393.498 sms: In GSMModel::setDestAddress with address +447537410227

    393.498 sms: Final address was +447537410227.

    393.498 sms: sendSmsMessage setting validity period to 30

    393.499 mms: Will track Phone Number Registration with message ID: [40000002] result was [1]

    393.499 sms: sending Gsm7 SMS of body (length 89) in 0 segments

    393.499 sms: queueMessageForSend: Sms messages in queue = 1

    393.499 sms: MO SMS Message details:

    393.499 sms: Destination: +447537410227

    393.499 sms: Validity: 30

    393.499 sms: Msg Encoding: 0 (7bitGSM)

    393.499 sms: Body Length: 89

  • by smcclay,

    smcclay smcclay Jul 2, 2014 6:32 PM in response to 2cx
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Jul 2, 2014 6:32 PM in response to 2cx

    It's beginning to look like this process is now broken. Several users have reported that they are unable to locate the required activation reply message in their logs. I also have not seen any successful activation attempts on the website in the last couple of days. It looks like the outbound request messages are still being sent and charged to the UK, but no reply is coming back from +447786205094. If anyone has seen a message from +447786205094 if they log-in to their Wind account and check their history (Only Pay-After accounts will show inbound messages), let us know.

     

    --

    Steve

  • by hkhan83,

    hkhan83 hkhan83 Jul 3, 2014 2:51 PM in response to smcclay
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 3, 2014 2:51 PM in response to smcclay

    Does this mean Apple is intentionally blocking something now with regards to activation message getting back to Wind? Who may be to blame here?

  • by frankywashere,

    frankywashere frankywashere Jul 5, 2014 11:41 AM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 5, 2014 11:41 AM in response to sunny416

    The process works. I am able to get the hex code, but when i submit it into the website, it says "invalid"

  • by Masula,

    Masula Masula Jul 5, 2014 7:12 PM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 5, 2014 7:12 PM in response to sunny416

    My number was ported from Fido to Wind. I tried everything suggested earlier but cant find 'GSM SMS Point to Point PDU' in the *-csi file. 

  • by Paulzy123,

    Paulzy123 Paulzy123 Jul 6, 2014 9:38 AM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 6, 2014 9:38 AM in response to sunny416

    So my iMessage is working great on 3 iPhones with IOS 7.1.1.

    Are you saying not to upgrade to the latest? (7.1.2)

     

    Wasn't sure if an already activated iMessage would need to be re-activated once upgraded, or if it carried forward?

     

    Thx

     

    Paul

  • by mikey1011,

    mikey1011 mikey1011 Jul 8, 2014 6:56 PM in response to Paulzy123
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 8, 2014 6:56 PM in response to Paulzy123

    YES it does not work, I found my logs but when I input it into the website, it says INVALID DATA can you help smcclay??Screen Shot 2014-07-08 at 9.56.00 PM.png

  • by smcclay,

    smcclay smcclay Jul 8, 2014 7:09 PM in response to mikey1011
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Jul 8, 2014 7:09 PM in response to mikey1011

    The SMS you are using is probably from someone you know. You need one with a 'Sender:' of '+447786205094'. These messages are no longer showing up in the log file which leads me to believe Wind is either not passing the request messages to Apple or is not delivering the response messages from Apple. Based on my server logs, it stopped working around the 26th of June.

     

    I exchanged messages with the Wind social media folks via Facebook today and they suggested I have folks call them. You need to tell them you are having issues with international SMS and NOT iMessage. Check your account history on the Wind website for the outgoing numbers to the UK. You can tell them that Wind customers used to get a reply from '+447786205094' when sending to those numbers (it has been working this way since at least January of this year), but it stopped working around June 26. You may also want to suggest that it works fine on other carriers around the world.

     

    Good luck and keep us posted.

  • by Chan14o,

    Chan14o Chan14o Jul 10, 2014 2:50 PM in response to smcclay
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 10, 2014 2:50 PM in response to smcclay

    I DM and call WIND, they told me that there's nothing wrong or they are not aware there is a problem with international SMS and I told them I'm using an iPhone too. So I don't know what to do or what's happening!!

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