Activating iMessage on MTN

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ebendl

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My wife recently took out the black Friday special from MTN and got a new iPhone.

She ported from CellC prepaid.

We set up the phone as a restored iTunes backup.

Unfortunately I've noticed that her iMessage via her phone number is no longer active. It just says "waiting for iMessage activation".

If I disable it and re-enable it I immediately get an error which says it can't be activated.

Ive tried a number of things I found online but none seems to resolve it. I haven't hard reset the phone yet, though...

Any thoughts? I'm running MTN on an iPhone with full iMessage support, so what can it be?
 
Hi.

To activate iMessage, load R 5 or more airtime. Then reactivate iMessage. R 1.60 will be deducted from the airtime to activate iMessage.

The reason for this is to send an international SMS to activate iMessage which is deducted from the airtime and not from your SMS bundle.
 
lord-of-war said:
Have the same problem! Will also try and see if it works! Thanks moedawood
Click to expand...

No problem, do let me know if this works for you. Remember, deactivate iMessage first, then load the airtime, then re activate. :)
 
Mmm, she's not on prepaid.

But thats a good thought -might it be a call limit? Or some service that you need to activate on MTN to allow international calling or sms?
 
ebendl said:
Mmm, she's not on prepaid.

But thats a good thought -might it be a call limit? Or some service that you need to activate on MTN to allow international calling or sms?
Click to expand...

You can load airtime on the Black Friday special. You know that right? I got the Black Friday special and have an iPhone. That's how I activated iMessage.

If your minutes, etc finish, you can just load airtime and use that instead of out of bundle.
 
ebendl said:
Mmm, she's not on prepaid.

But thats a good thought -might it be a call limit? Or some service that you need to activate on MTN to allow international calling or sms?
Click to expand...
Top up contracts allow for loading of airtime.

Also international calls or sms are not included in the package bundle consisting of minutes/sms'(on any network) due to that costing more.
If your contract had a rand value it could be deducted.

Load the R5 airtime as suggested, and see what happens...
 
moedawood said:
Hi.

To activate iMessage, load R 5 or more airtime. Then reactivate iMessage. R 1.60 will be deducted from the airtime to activate iMessage.

The reason for this is to send an international SMS to activate iMessage which is deducted from the airtime and not from your SMS bundle.
Click to expand...

Yes, this worked for me too!!!

Spent hours on the phone with MTN trying to get assistance with the iMessage anomaly, all to no avail.

Read modeawood's solution and 5 minutes later iMessage/Facetime was linked to my new number!!
 
You sir, are amazing. I tried all manner of call barring, account limits etc. last night. No luck. Waiting for a couple of hours and it still gave me the immediate "could not active iMessage" error.

Then I tried loading R5 airtime onto the account from FNB half an hour ago. Tried activating iMessage again, got the same error.

And then my wife just announced that it is activated now.

This is on a MyMTNChoice Talk+ S contract.
 
Awesome! :) Glad this solution worked for you guys!

Remember, if you remove your sim from the iPhone to place in a router, iMessage will need to be re activated upon placing it back in the iPhone. Just make sure you have R 1.60 as a minimum of airtime and iMessage should automatically re activate. Enjoy!
 
Thanks so much! Four months of googling etc. And solved after two minutes
 
Thanks! This also resolved my problem too! Exact same Black Friday deal with 50gig data but can't activate iMessage. It is now solved. Can mod mark this as sticky please? Been googling the whole day until this thread.
 
I'm having trouble activating with my SA apple id, I had the number associated with my US apple id, removed it, then added it to my SA id via the apple.id website.

But when I try and add the number under Settings - Apple ID - Name, Phone Number, Email - Contactable At - I get error this number is already in use with another account.

I have confirmed it's not showing on my US account page anymore.

Eish: too many codes sent, now locked out for 8hours
 
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