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 seanhealy,

    seanhealy seanhealy Jul 11, 2014 5:44 PM in response to smcclay
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 11, 2014 5:44 PM in response to smcclay

    I just called them and they created a ticket for their techs to call me back with more information. Hopefully we can get it working again. I just picked up a WIND sim yesterday and it would be a deal breaker if I can't get iMessage to activate. I'll post back with their response.

  • by Masula,

    Masula Masula Jul 12, 2014 10:15 AM in response to seanhealy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 12, 2014 10:15 AM in response to seanhealy

    I checked my wind account. All I can see is "SMS International Sent".. no trace of SMS International Received... seems like Wind is having issues receiving international SMS from Apple?

  • by ameanworld,

    ameanworld ameanworld Jul 12, 2014 4:04 PM in response to smcclay
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 12, 2014 4:04 PM in response to smcclay

    Ive been trying this method constantly but it doesnt seem to be working although the text has been sent internationally but nothing shows up on the baseband logs. Could you possibly help me with this issue?

  • by PastaLulz,

    PastaLulz PastaLulz Jul 13, 2014 9:06 PM in response to Masula
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 13, 2014 9:06 PM in response to Masula

    I asked WIND about it and they replied with this "As it's not a service we provide we would not be able to guarantee how it functions or how any changes/upgrades to our network might affect."  So basically they don't care. They also said they have no timeline to actually officially supporting Apple products...

  • by tones06,

    tones06 tones06 Jul 14, 2014 6:37 AM in response to PastaLulz
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 14, 2014 6:37 AM in response to PastaLulz

    Originally when I tried this out, I had the problem of not being able to find the hex string in the baseband files when using my desktop.

     

    Eventually I got smart and moved operations to my laptop and everything showed up and worked. Not sure why it's like that.
    Don't over click 'sync' otherwilse your file will be extremely huge and harder to distinguish which is the newer hex string.

     

    Just a helpful reminder: Do NOT update your phone. By updating your software, you reset your imessage and it will revert back to using your email.
    It took me several tries until I did a complete factory restore, erased all settings and such, tried it when it was a clean slate and then backed up.

     

    It seems that you can't send the same Hex String twice to activate your phone. You'll get an "invalid input" notification.

     

    Also, I found that you'd have to wait a few hours (not the usual 2mins) if you want to get the proper Hex string. Like last time, I just clicked the iMessage activation off and on before bed and in the morning followed the protocol.

     

    Now it works like a dream.

  • by LAKH J,

    LAKH J LAKH J Jul 14, 2014 7:14 PM in response to tones06
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 14, 2014 7:14 PM in response to tones06

    HI

    when was the last time you tried activating the imessage? I mean did u do it this week bec i am trying fir a while but not able to find the  "sms hex tr " log. I dont see it at all. I will try restoring the iphone and set up as new and then try this weekEnd. Lets see.

     

    But as SMCLAY said," the link sounds broken.

  • by Munakib,

    Munakib Munakib Jul 15, 2014 5:37 AM in response to LAKH J
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 15, 2014 5:37 AM in response to LAKH J

    I just tried his method of leaving it on for overnight and then trying to sync to get the hex, unfortunately its a no go. I am confident when SMCLAY says he hasnt seen any server responses after 26th that either Wind/Apple has turned something off. Maybe Wind desperately wants a contract with Apple and they decided to stop allowing 3rd party iPhones to get access to Apple's key features unless Apple is willing to negotiate with them or it could be Apple being Apple.

  • by aakashkap44,

    aakashkap44 aakashkap44 Jul 15, 2014 5:17 PM in response to Munakib
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 15, 2014 5:17 PM in response to Munakib

    Yeah my imessage was working up until today when I updated to 7.1.2, and now once again, its not working... I've tried the many different ways to get it to work with no luck

  • by Paulzy123,

    Paulzy123 Paulzy123 Jul 16, 2014 2:27 PM in response to aakashkap44
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 16, 2014 2:27 PM in response to aakashkap44

    I Updated 3 iPhones to 7.1.2. Imessage stayed functional. 

  • by Paulzy123,

    Paulzy123 Paulzy123 Jul 16, 2014 2:31 PM in response to Paulzy123
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 16, 2014 2:31 PM in response to Paulzy123

    What I am curious about tho...

     

    Has anyone tried to activate iMessage when roaming say on at&t network?

    in theory are you not using AT&T to activate on their "apple approved" network?

     

    Just a thought.

  • by bigchip7,

    bigchip7 bigchip7 Jul 18, 2014 4:54 PM in response to Paulzy123
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 18, 2014 4:54 PM in response to Paulzy123

    yes, tried to activate on both AT&T and T-Mobile. no such a luck

  • by Motafota,

    Motafota Motafota Jul 27, 2014 8:33 PM in response to bigchip7
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 27, 2014 8:33 PM in response to bigchip7

    Has anyone gotten it to work past June 26th? The hex records show up but it says the value is invalid. Just wondering if anyone had any slim success with it?

  • by Munakib,

    Munakib Munakib Jul 29, 2014 7:15 AM in response to Motafota
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 29, 2014 7:15 AM in response to Motafota

    "value is invalid" as because the hex that you sent was not for the +44 number, it could be an sms that came from someone else and not apple. So i tried it again today, no luck. Basically avoid restoring your phone to 7.1.2 if you already have imessage on, you can try upgrading to 7.1.2 but dont do a complete restore.

  • by seemehatin,

    seemehatin seemehatin Jul 29, 2014 7:28 PM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 29, 2014 7:28 PM in response to sunny416

    It looks like whatever happened booted out people who had already activated iMessage using the hex method. My iMessage has been working fine for the past 2 months when I switched to Wind and activated iMessage using theonlinemac site. This weekend I randomly got a "Your carrier may charge you for iMessage activated SMS blah blah" and since then my cell number is not activated for iMessage.

     

    Overall, I think I'm going to switch to a "real" network this weekend. iMessage is a deal breaker for me because I have a lot of international friends I like to text/send pictures to and I've had quite a few 'No Service' blackouts with Wind, I can't get service in my office which is on the 60th floor of an office block downtown and it's only a 3G connection which at times is painfully slow. All to save....$20?

     

    Good luck!

     

    I'm switching to Fido.

  • by joshua fact,

    joshua fact joshua fact Jul 30, 2014 5:51 PM in response to sunny416
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 30, 2014 5:51 PM in response to sunny416

    II'm still on 7.1.1 and fearful to update. If I simply update, will imessage disconnect? or will it keep the connection alive? I don't want to be stuck without it.

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