Some T-Mobile users experience bug with eSIM on iPhones

Yesterday afternoon, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman Tweeted about an issues that some T-Mobile customers are experiencing on iPhones. Specifically, some lines activated with eSIM were suddenly deactivated from iMessage and FaceTime with no way to re-activate the line with Apple’s core communication services.

There is a very nasty iPhone and @TMobile bug where iMessage and FaceTime for a device’s phone number will randomly deactivate and there is no way to reactivate it. The only solution that worked for me is getting a new physical SIM card. This is a very disappointing problem.

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) May 19, 2022

There are a couple of ways that the issue can be fixed, one of which is removing the eSIM and re-registering the account to the iPhone. You can also visit a T-Mobile Store to activate a SIM and install it to reactivate iMessage or FaceTime.

Another solution flagged to me by some is removing your eSIM account from the iPhone and setting that up again. But that’s complex for most people and shouldn’t need to ever to be done. It is not optimal to be unable to send or receive text messages. Not “it just works.”

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) May 19, 2022

T-Mobile confirmed that it is working with Apple to address the problem. Gurman also explained that this bug is not new, and has been confirmed to have affected iPhone customers on iOS versions 15. 4, 15. 5, and the current version 15.6.

T-Mobile reached out to say they are working with Apple on trying to resolve the issue. It sounds a bit early, however. T-Mobile claims it’s an Apple ID/iCloud problem. This should be fixed in the next iOS update. https://t.co/DuvSpHGP3l

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) May 20, 2022

Via Twitter