How to migrate to another mobile operator and not go bankrupt (for iOS owners)

Hi, Habr!

I decided to share my experience as an apple slave to an iPhone owner without problems migrating from one mobile operator to another.

So, everyone knows that in Russia, from December 1, 2013, you can switch from one mobile operator to another with all the pros and cons, and keep your phone number . Habré even wrote articles about it and how you can benefit from the "mobile migration . "

Since I got the service "the best mobile operator" (in their opinion), I decided to go "on the black side" and almost went bankrupt. How to avoid it - under the cut.

So, in order to change the operator, you need to do two simple steps:

1. To come to the office of your future operator ( let's call it “New” for simplicity, and the one from which we are going to leave is “Old” ), write an application for number transfer and sign a contract for communication services (having bought a SIM card along the way).
2. Wait 8 days ( and pray that everything has grown together there ), then use the New Operator with a calm heart.

This is indicated in the advertising of almost every operator who wants to get you into the subscriber network in his sect .

In the spoiler I'll sign the process in more detail - maybe someone will be interested.


And now - the most interesting. The staff of my New Operator did not know about this. Moreover, not only ordinary employees of the sales office, but also the second wave of technical support.

Full number transfer technically lasts up to 20 days from the date of writing the application

After 8 days, ends only the "external", its legal part. The “internals”, that is, the technical part, are fitted on average for 20 days. This was reported to me by the second round of Apple’s technical support, after I was worried that I received SMS invoices abroad, which are not visible in the sent ones.

Almost every iPhone owner knows that in order to activate iMessage and FaceTime, you need to send a message to Apple in Ireland. After that, the phone number will be tied to the Apple ID and the iMessage recipient will see your name in the sender field, and not the message “Presumably [your name]” or mail that is tied to the Apple ID ((if the phone number is not tied to services). message service, it is not displayed in the sent and sent after you click "I agree" on the pop-up when you first enter the Messages.

This message is sent more than once, after which the "Waiting for activation" status appears in Settings "Messages"



As I later understood from a conversation with Apple support, this request has time for validity. If at the end of this time a positive response from the system is not received, you are denied



to bind the iMessage service to the phone number and in the Settings in the Messages item a failure pops up. After this failure, iOS stops trying to bind iMessage to the phone number until you again switch the slider to "On" position. In my case, this did not work, and regardless of whether the slider was turned to the “On” or “Off” position, the messages were sent. In total, I sent from 3 to 7 SMS per day.

Now it seems that the solution was on the surface, but in fact I called Apple several times, where (as it turned out) the first round offered me something that I couldn’t do - to reboot the device and reset all settings to “default” and others dances with tambourines. Then shrugged and said that the service SMS is sent only once. The problem is on the side of the New operator.

Technical support and consultants of the New operator said that if SMS is not visible in the sent ones, then this is not their problem, but the problem on the Apple side. And anyway, I'm an asshole, that I chose such a phone, and they can’t turn off sending SMS at all.

Only a young lady from the second round of tech support Apple almost immediately asked me if I had changed the operator. After I said that I changed ten days ago and now I suffer terribly, I said about twenty days needed for a full transition. I was surprised that it is impossible to stop sending service SMS in manual mode by switching the slider and sent a link to the Apple support site, where you can make a “hard disconnect” . She also advised to try to bind the number to the service iMessage in a month, and if it does not work out - call her again.



After such a “manual” disconnection, the money was no longer written off, a little more than a month after the migration, I switched the iMessage and FaceTime slider to the “On” position and ... it all worked in 5 minutes and one SMS (I looked at the balance change).
Having decided that it was enough for me to get nervous once, transferring my wife to the Dark Side, I turned off iMessage and FaceTime with her even before changing the SIM card and turned it on only after twenty-five days. The result is the same. The experiment can be considered successful.

Conclusion

Moving to another operator without changing the number, forget about iMessage and FaceTime for a month if you don’t want to lose your nerve cells and money.

I generally lost 10 days before the services were forcibly disconnected, I lost 230 rubles.

I hope that this small note has helped someone save them.

While the article was being written: There is also an opinion that in the foreseeable future, SMS will disappear as a class due to the rejection of second-generation networks. Everyone will use an analogue of iMessage - RCS (Rich Communication Service), which offers to introduce the GSM Association

PS: Photos, when everything is bad - not mine, did not think of a screenshot. The rest are mine.
PPS: Also on the website of the ZNIIS, you can check which subscriber network the number belongs to.