iMessage issue in Dual SIM mode -

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Level 1

9 points

iMessage issue in Dual SIM mode -

Hello,

I am using an iPhone XS Max with 2 physical SIM cards. It works great BUT I have noticed a very strange / critical issue that has resulted in getting a hefty bill of EUR 698 within 24 hours related to mobile originated roaming SMS and iMessage.

Phone model : iPhone XS Max model A2104 - Dual nano-SIMs

Primary SIM: South Africa - Vodacom (Local)
Secondary SIM : France - SFR (roaming)

Configuration:

Primary SIM (Local) : it defined in the settings to be used as : default line, data, iMessage
Secondary SIM (Roaming): it is not defined to be used for anything else than a standby SIM to receive calls / sms
Data roaming: deactivated in the settings (for info: no way to differentiate between the 2 SIM)
Primary SIM uses WIFI calling (called VoWIFI with Vodacom). this is for info as it probably has no impact on the iMessage issue reported below.
last note: both SIM cards have been used in an iPhone before, with iMessage activated, with NO roaming or excessive billing issues experienced

Issue:

After 24 hours of usage with no issues visually / technically experienced, I have surprisingly ...received an alert email from SFR (Secondary SIM, roaming) advising me that my roaming SMS bill was reaching EUR 698... I know for a fact that I never sent any SMS on the phone and I have no iOS app that sends SMS in the background.
Checking my detailed ongoing bill online, I realized that from the moment the phone was powered on, the secondary SIM card was used in the phone to send more than 1060 SMS (1 or more per minute) @ EUR 0.66 within 24 hours. Hopefully I had put my phone in flight mode while sleeping.... otherwise bill would have been worse.
I contacted SFR to get more insights and from the support agent, looking at iMessage status in the phone, I realized that all these roaming SMS were repeatedly sent in the background by the iPhone trying to activate iMessage for the secondary SIM card (SFR Roaming).
When trying various things to troubleshoot, from what I recall, as soon as I activated data roaming and turned off WIFI, iMessage was activated for the SFR roaming SIM.

=> As of today, I've taken out the secondary SIM to prevent any more excessive billing issues as I don't undertstand the exact issue and I have no ways of barring Mobile originated "ghosts" SMS for the secondary SIM card

=> I am under the impression there's something very wrong in iMessage behavior for the secondary SIM card.

=> There should be an option to fully turn off iMessage and its configuration attempts for the 2nd SIM as it uses blindly SMS in roaming....

Apple please assist....

Thanks !

iPhone XS, iOS 12.1, XS Max model A2104 (dual nano SIM)

Posted on Nov 4, 2018 1:01 AM

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Answer 1

LeRaoul Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 26, 2018 3:54 AM in response to kosmacd

You are right, iMessage can only be activated for 1 subscription only at a time and it's still the case.

To answer your questions the fact that I activated the roaming did not solve the problem on the long run as, as soon as I deactivated it, things again went wrong again with these background SMS.

Now the issue continued to persist as I discovered that the SFR roaming SIM was also trying to send an SMS to a short code 8860 that's possibly linked to the Visual Voice mail service activation... so to stop the roaming costs damage, I've barred outgoing premium numbers / short codes on SFR service portal for my subscription and it finally "killed" this insane background traffic. I then unsubscribed from visual voicemail as well for safety and now there's 0 traffic.

Hopefully I have reported this to SFR and after a few tries, they've accepted to refund me in full. I still think that this background SMS traffic linked to iMessage & Visual voicemail activation is very problematic and the workaround I used is not a final solution.

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Answer 2

kosmacd

Level 1

9 points

Nov 26, 2018 3:31 AM in response to LeRaoul

Interesting, but very unfortunate in regards to your roaming charges.

This must be a bug, as all the available information I could find on the internet points to the fact that only one phone line (the primary) can be activated for iMessage at any given time. I for one would be very happy if this was different. Probably it would be good to report this as a bug with Apple, as I'm pretty sure they are not actively monitoring the community:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

BTW - Can you confirm which numbers do you currently have under Settings > Messages > Send&Receive, as you said "as soon as I activated data roaming and turned off WIFI, iMessage was activated for the SFR roaming SIM.". As I understand this would imply that you have both lines activated for iMessage now?

As a data point, I have successfully activated my iMessage on an iPhone XS while in roaming, after "only" 12 sent SMS, without having to enable data roaming.

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iMessage issue in Dual SIM mode -

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