XL Axiata No Longer Supports iMessage and FaceTime Activation Using Phone Numbers [Updated]
[update 24 June 2017] It’s June 2017, and FaceTime and iMessage activations have stopped working again, at least since as far back as August 2016.
Unlike last year however, this time there’s been no official word from XL regarding this matter and the only meaningful customer service response they’ve given is to use iCloud or email activation.
Existing iOS users on XL who have not changed to a different iOS device need not worry but those who decide to get a new device or switch back to XL’s SIM card after using a different operator, won’t be able to activate iMessage and FaceTime using their XL number.
[update 28 April 2016] XL Axiata seems to have re-enabled iMessage and FaceTime activation. XL subscribers can now use their phone numbers for these services again.
Original post below.
iMessage and FaceTime users on Indonesian carrier XL Axiata are being left out in the cold as the carrier has stopped activating the two Apple services. The service disruption apparently has gone on for months without the carrier making any official statement regarding the suspension.
Having returned from a trip to Bangkok in February, my attempt to reactivate iMessage and FaceTime on my iPhone on the XL Axiata network kept failing for a few days until I switched the activation request to my email address. The phone number that’s registered on the iMessage and FaceTime settings pages remains the local number that was used in Bangkok.
Since my phone number isn’t an essential channel for my communications in any way, I didn’t pay much attention to it until I happened upon an XL Center outlet and spoke to the staff there about the issue. Their customer support staff were clearly aware of the problem but only saying that it’s something that’s been happening for a while and they have no way of fixing it for the time being. @XLCare customer support on Twitter was also unable to help.
After having spoken to @AppleSupport on Twitter and receiving step by step instructions on the possible ways to reactivate using my phone number, their final suggestion was to restore my iPhone, which wasn’t really an option since there’s a lot of pending work and I’m not keen on spending up to two days redownloading and setting my apps all over again.
A search on Twitter and a survey among contacts revealed that no XL Axiata customers have been able to activate their iMessage and FaceTime services this year and they’ve wasted a good amount of credits in a vain attempt to reach the activation server.
November 2015 was the first time that @xlcare responded to a customer query about iMessage activation suggesting that they use their Apple ID email address instead of their phone number.
Subsequent responses however show that the support team had yet to fully grasp the severity or even the nature of the problem and continued to suggest network or software resets to unsuspecting subscribers while occasionally suggesting the use of Apple ID for activation.
A number of sources within the telco industry revealed that the issue is not actually technical and it may affect other Indonesian carriers in the near future.
Seems that even though Telkomsel was the first Indonesian carrier to launch the iPhone in March 2009 with the iPhone 3G, XL may have been the first to strike a contract with Apple to deliver the company’s communications services after they were launched in 2010 (FaceTime) and 2011 (iMessage). A contract that may have expired and not renewed in 2015 for some reason. As a result, service activation has been suspended at least as far back as November 2015, although there is no issue with using either of the service if they’ve been activated previously or using email addresses.
If other Indonesian carriers also decline to renew their agreements with Apple on service activations, it will trigger a much larger service disruption and Indonesian iPhone and iPad users will be locked out of their iMessage and FaceTime accounts unless they use their Apple ID for service activation.
At the moment, neither iMessage or FaceTime are major players in the Indonesian messaging and video call scenes as BBM, Line, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram are still the top five messaging apps in the country.
For now, iPhone and iPad users on XL Axiata are advised to cancel any iMessage and FaceTime activation request each time it shows up and switch to using their Apple ID email addresses instead.
