After carrier settings update, can't connect to cellular network

On Tuesday afternoon (11/14/2017) itunes notified me that the carrier settings on my iPhone 6+ needed to be updated. It updated them to AT&T 30.1 and since then, my phone has been unable to connect to AT&T via cellular. Tried all the standard stuff: restart, switch to airplane mode and back, hard reset, turn off LTE, etc. no change. The only way I am able to connect is if I am on wifi and I turn on the wifi calling function.

I Contacted AT&T, on Wednesday morning, and they went through the standard stuff again with no change. They thought that maybe the new carrier update isn't playing nice with the SIM and advised me to take it to one of their stores to swap SIM cards to see if that would fix it. The store swapped in a SIM from a working phone and the problem stayed with the phone. When he put my SIM in a different phone, the SIM worked. So the problem doesn't seem to be with the SIM.

I contacted AT&T a second time to report that the problem was not corrected with a SIM and they went through a little more trouble shooting before saying that the phone would need to be replaced/warrantied. They also claimed that the carrier setting update is Apple's responsibility and then transferred me to Apple's tech support.

Talking with Apple, he had me try a few more things, and suggested restoring the phone as a new iphone and if that didn't fix it, then it is likely that the carrier settings are the problem. Apple then claimed that the carrier settings are the carrier's responsibility.

Of course, restoring the phone didn't fix it. I've since went ahead and restored the phone from a back-up and am back at square one.

This creates a problem, since both companies tech support seem to agree that the carrier settings are the issue, but also claim that the other company is responsible for the carrier settings issue.

I am stuck in the middle with a phone that was hamstrung by someone else's software.

So ultimately the questions are:

1. Has anyone else run into this before and how was it rectified?

2. Who actually is responsible for the carrier settings?

Posted on Nov 17, 2017 8:00 AM