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The Issues.. Oh god the issues!

The problem started Saturday morning when I was lying in bed and decided to check my email. Our roommate had just moved out and took with him our wireless network (his hardware, but I was managing it), but seeing the little blue "E" icon that meant i have EDGE service, I decided to open the mail app. Instead of a nice tidy inbox, I was greeted with pop-up message saying "Could not activate EDGE: You are not subscribed to EDGE". Now, I don't have a $20/month data plan for nothing. I most certainly was subscribed to EDGE, so pardon my acronym but WTF was this?

I restarted my phone and still got the error message, then turned airplane mode off for 20 seconds and back on again (This is supposed to clear some settings like WiFi so I gave it a shot). Still nothing. Now, I had jailbroken my phone the day before with iLiberty+ (I STRONGLY recommend this program for installing 3rd party apps, unlocking, activating, or bootloader patching), and so was afraid I'd broken it somehow, but I had used EDGE fine after that for the better part of a day so I was on the fence on whether that was the problem. Like any good problem solver I had to rule it out regardless, so I decided to restore my iPhone.

The first thing I did was go into iTunes and hit Restore. Once that was done I tried to get on EDGE with the result of the same error message. Through iLiberty my bootloader had been changed, and more importantly my baseband may have been changed as well. Baseband is the firmware that runs your phone, modem, wireless, and bluetooth hardware, so I was definitely suspect of that. I re-ran iLiberty+ with the option of restoring the baseband and bootloader, and still had no success. Finally I re-re-ran iLiberty+ with a WiFi/EDGE fix I had come across, usually only broken through using ZiPhone (DON'T USE ZiPHONE!) but decided to try it anyway. Of course, no change. I still got that damn error message! This was getting frustrating in the extreme.

After this I called AT&T through 611, and after 30 minutes of work knew the lady, while being extremely nice, had no idea what the problem was. She thought it must be because I was picking up WiFi. Not only were there no hotspots in range, I had WiFi explicitly turned off. Rather than explain this to her I just said thank you and hung up.

Figuring I'd done all I could with hardware, I account was screwed up, I went to AT&T and checked my account. It showed that I had an EDGE data plan and should be working. Nothing on the support site, KB, FAQ, etc. was of any use, and live chat was closed for the day, not that I had high hopes for that... I had a lot of things to do this weekend so I decided I'd just call a different support number on Monday and try again.

The Solution!

I know I know BLAH BLAH BLAH Get to the fix! Okay okay! Flash forward to today. Before calling AT&T back I decided to do some goog-vestigating. Of course this was practically the first thing I did, but hadn't gotten any immediate success, the closest being an AT&T forum where go-phone customers were having a similar issue last December (they fixed this by renewing their monthly contracts a bit early). On this second round of searching I found a couple of potential hits, but the one that finally fixed me was here on Apple Discussions!

To summarize, people fixed this one of two ways. The way that fixed me makes me want to facepalm so hard that I replace Captain Picard as the de-facto image macro. Its an iPhone setting and goes thus:
Settings --> General --> Reset --> Resent Network Settings

I know! "IDIOT!" Why didn't I know that was there? Because there was no "TFM" for me to "R", thats why. I was so relieved when it worked that I cried out in a fit of unbridled joy, to the unease of my co-workers. Not only was my problem fixed, I didn't have to call AT&T back!!!

Now, for those of you who are not so lucky as to have you iPhone placated with this simple settings reset, most of the people on the above thread solved their problem thusly:

It's definitely not an Apple problem, it's a simple checkbox on AT&T's account configuration screen called EDGE Provisioning. Some account changes, like adding a Foundation Account number to your plan to take advantage of company discounts, over-ride the EDGE provisioning setting.

Unfortunately, some AT&T customer service reps think it's iPhone related and don't bother checking your account first before transferring you to Apple. So, do yourselves a favor and ask them to check "EDGE Provisioning" on your account (use their terminology) and they will be able to fix it for you in a second.

Several people on the forum echoed cries of joy as this solved their problem as well. Apparently the number to call is either 800-331-0500 or 877-419-4500 and be sure to ask them to check your "EDGE Provisioning".

So, with a fully functioning iPhone (again jailbroken and running some kick-ass apps!) I leave you this information in hopes that it helps someone out the same issue.

PS: A very special thanks to Joe Maloney1 at the Apple Discussions forum for providing the crucial fix for me!

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