AT&T has implemented a workaround to allow existing GoPhone Pick Your Plan customers to use Apple’s iPhone without needing to sign up for a new line of service.
Due to limitations in the iTunes-AT&T activation server, GoPhone accounts that were set up outside of iTunes were unable to add an iPhone to their account. This meant that GoPhone account holders would have to abandon their existing mobile number, or go through an elaborate porting mess (porting a number out of AT&T to a third-party prepaid service, setting up iPhone on a new GoPhone account, and then porting the number back over it).
Thankfully, the process has been made rather simple. GoPhone users simply need to call 611, and at the prompt ask to Add Features. Saying “iPhone” at the prompt brings up an offer to attach the iPhone $19.99 bundle (which adds unlimited MEdia Net and Visual Voicemail). As soon as the change takes effect (at the start of the next billing cycle), you can connect your iPhone to iTunes and complete activation.
Unfortunately, PhoneNews.com has found AT&T Customer Care to be extremely uninformed on this process. Every GoPhone customer care representative we spoke to on multiple calls was unaware that this was the process to add GoPhone to an existing account. Most either generically told us to connect iPhone to iTunes (a non-starter for GoPhone users), or that it simply could not be done.
Thanks for this article. I was convinced that I’d have to get a new phone number if I wanted to get an iPhone. But, I’m encouraged to hear that I won’t have to do this. I hope the staff at my local ATT store has a clue!
Greendragon50, the store staff probably will not have a clue. You should call GoPhone Customer Care, ask to be transferred to iPhone Activations. When you get to the iPhone Activations department, ask to be transferred (yes, again) to the iPhone Prepaid Activation help desk.
Thanks again! So, it sounds like there’s no need to buy the phone at an ATT store. I suspect I’ll be going shopping this weekend.
Clueless is putting it MILDLY- Chris, after man HOURS of trying to deal with AT&T I think his belongs in the vaporware category – I think unlock/jailbreak is the only answer
This doesn’t work.
I bought a bargain-basement GoPhone with the 29.99 pick your plan in order to try this. 611–>add features does recognize ‘iPhone’, but then tells me it can’t add the iPhone bundle because I don’t own an iPhone.
E, did you call iPhone prepaid activations? Here is the workflow as I understand it…
1) Call AT&T’s iPhone Activation dept. Get transfered to a prepaid iPhone activations specialist. Explain the situation, and ask for the specialist to attach the new iPhone’s IMEI to the existing account.
2) Go through activations in iTunes as a new customer. Enter in exactly the same info you provided when your GoPhone account was set up initially. Presuming you fail credit check, you’ll be offered GoPhone plans. You should enter your SSN as 123-45-6789 to ensure credit check fails.
3) Assuming your iPhone is successfully activated… check your account at selfincharge.com to see if the iPhone data plan was attached to the account. Usually, it isn’t, so you then call 611 and have the IVR attach the iPhone data plan to your account.
Christopher, thanks for the reply.
Unfortunately, I went ahead and activated the iPhone on the two-year plan through the normal process so I can’t check this workflow, and I think I misunderstood the process anyway…
My interest in trying this was to get into a prepaid plan without using the SS# trick(s). I’ve been unable to find any firsthand reports of this or any variant working since mid-2007, and I’m twitchy about anything with the potential to mess with my credit.
Anyway, I appreciate the info and my broke buddy gets a free GoPhone. 🙂
-E
There is only one sure-fire way to bypass the credit check (and be placed on a GoPhone plan) without entering your SSN.
To do this, you go to an AT&T Retail Store and ask them to prepare you an iPhone Credit Check Number. At the store, tell them you decline to provide your SSN. They will generate a credit check number, which you will provide to iTunes during activation.
Upon doing so, the credit check will fail (because the PIN generated by the store has no valid SSN number attached to it), and you will be able to chose a GoPhone plan.
Well,despite the Apple representative and two ATT representatives telling me that I could keep my GoPhone number and keep a prepaid payment plan, it seems to be a red herring.
Here’s how it went today…I called ATT and the first representative told me that keeping the # and the prepaid plan was not possible. I was then transferred to Apple where a representative told me that I could do exactly what I wanted. The Apple rep then transferred me back to ATT where a new ATT rep. agreed that I could do what I wanted but the computer systems were down and would be back up in 2 hours. I called back and spoke to another representative who also said I could do what I wanted and supposedly added my SIM and IMEI number to my account. And, I was told to put in the fake SSN number to get to the GoPhone account.
Here’s where it all falls apart. I tried the fake SSN number but kept getting an “invalid SSN number ” error. I called ATT again and was told that my SIM and IMEI number had not been registered with my account and that want I wanted to do was impossible.
I was told that the only thing I could do to keep my existing number was to go to an ATT store, convert to a post-paid plan and then activate in the usual way.
Seems to me that this is a way for ATT to extort extra money from customers. I may try the credit check path but I also may just run out of patience.
By “fake ssn”, you should type in your correct SSN, except for the last four digits.
See, the first five SSN digits simply determine the location and year that you were born. If those are not valid, the SSN is rejected as invalid. But, if you type in everything right, except for the last four digits… iTunes will see the SSN as valid, but failing credit check.
In the end, I went to a post-paid account. If there was someone who actually knew how to add an iPhone to an existing pre-paid account, I couldn’t find them.
I went into my local AT&T store (Brunswick, ME) on April 2 and they said they could just flat out sign you up for Gophone pick your plan on the iPhone or migrate my pay as you go plan. But, they said it was not possible to use pay as you go with the iPhone. Is this something new the store can do or am I missing something this article is saying?
I went to AT&T retail store (LA,CA) on April 6th and asked for pre-paid GoPhone. I didn’t know there are two different GoPhone deals.
GoPhone Pay As You Go and GoPhone Pick your Plan deal….
They don’t allow to use iphone with PAY AS YOU GO deal. SAD…
Bada Han, you are correct, PAYG is not supported with iPhone. This is because there is no unlimited data plan (you have to call 611 and manually add 1 or 5 MB data packages when data is exhausted).
To work around this, you can use one of many tools (iJailbreak, ZiPhone, etc) to Activate the iPhone using a SIM that has been set up on a PAYG account.
You can search the news for past articles that go more in-depth about this process, and our experiences with it. It’s a viable option for many…
I just activated an Go-Phone SIM with a jailbroken iPhone and AT&T isn’t letting me add any data plan, not even the 5-10-15mb plans. The 611 message is that my phone can’t use MediaNet. Without a plan, the MediaNet $.01/per Kb is untenable. I see that they do still have unlimited data plans for other phones.
I’ll have to ditch this SIM and get another one to set up first on another phone like an old Sony Ericcson and then swap it to the iPhone as Christopher is suggesting.
Just bought PAYG minutes at the ATT store and had them assign them to a SIM with no phone. Then I downloaded ZiPhone (www.ziphone.com) and selected the Jailbreak and Activate.
Done. But not before wasting an hour of my life with AT&T customer service.
I would like for at@t to stop charging me for services that I do not want. Every month I am charged a fee for ring tones. I do not need ring tones.
I just bought a used first-gen iPhone. I am an existing GoPhone customer, and called 611 to activate the bundle. It said that I could not add this because I don’t own an iPhone. When i went to customer care to do this, despite their calling Apple Activations, they absolutely said this could not be done.
the kicker is that the phone has 2.0 firmware. So, either I’m going to have to wait for software to be released that will jailbreak, activate and unlock the 2.0 firmware, or I’m going to have to downgrade to 1.4 and then activate it outside of iTunes. If I can get the thing activated, maybe then i can get them to activate the iPhone bundle. If not, then at least I’ll be able to activate unlimited medianet, though then I’ll have to put up with all of the annoying 0.00 cent used notifications.
All i want to do is give them money, it shouldn’t be this hard…
I have no tried going through iPhone GoPhone activations, and they still refuse to activate a used iPhone on an existing GoPhone account. So I’ve just hacked the thing and gone with the unlimited medianet package instead.
I have the first generation iPHone & have been using pay as you go plan for months – no problems. I read above where someone said you couldn’t use this plan unless you phone was jailbroken. This is not the case with my iPhone.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! IT WORKS!!!
I can’t tell you how helpful this article has been and that in fact it is possible to take an existing pick your plan and migrate it to an iPhone 2G. Don’t think this can be done on a 3G.
Here is how it all went down!
The whole process was messy after day after day of calls and visits to both ATT and Apple I finally figured out how to get it done.
First I had a very old hybrid pick your plan account from years ago. I was told by a number of different people that I would need to move to a new plan which could add unlimited media net. Not sure if this is true or not but I went ahead with it and changed to the $29.00 200min plan.
I monitored my http://www.selfincharge.com account frequently as I progressed. When I saw the new plan in effect I went down to my local ATT store and got a new iPhone SIM card. Did not have them activate it. Just add the ICCID: and my IMEI number to my existing pick your plan account.
I then went home put the new SIM in turned on the phone . Called ATT automated system and added the “iPhone†feature bundle just as this article says. It was succesfull adding this time. (Multiple attempts in the past had failed probably due to my old incompatible plan)
I waited till I could see the iphone bundle on my account http://www.selfincharge.com. I then plugged my iPhone into iTunes and began the scary part!
Sign up as a new ATT account. You need to pick a regular non go phone plan as this is the only option at first. I selected the $59 plan. I then entered all my correct name/credit card/address/email as was in my gophone pick your plan account. For SSN I entered my valid first 5 digits and then 1234 (xxx-xx-1234 x=my real SSN numbers). You then go through the next couple pages accepting everything and authorization begins. Takes a bit and then fails the credit check and gave me three options. Not sure what all three were but the second option is pick a gophone plan. I did that and took the plan I already had $49 ($29 200min plus $19.99 iPhone bundle). It went through setting up with a new account. I started getting nervous because I wanted to keep my existing account. Well after some time it says authorization needs more time to complete and an email will be sent providing more info. I then get three emails. First from iTunes saying wait while they try to authorize. Second from ATT saying exactly the same thing. Third from iTuns saying “Account created†waiting for funding and providing me with my new phone number. Here I’m crossing my fingers and surely enough the number is correct. It’s my existing number. I do a quick victory dance and then continue. I do not fund it as I have lots of rollover money on the account. Instead I plug the iPhone into iTunes and it completes. Phone goes active and I get an fourth email almost instantly after stating account funded!â€
Woohooo! I do another victory dance and thought I would post everything while it was fresh in my mind! Good luck all. It works as stated in the article!
I got an iphone off ebay. What do I need to know to get the internet to work? What steps do I need to go through? The phone is already unlocked. I got a new sim card in there with a new pay as you go 39.00 plan per month. What follows to get more features, and how? I am computer illiterate. Help!
I would suggest calling 611 and getting an introduction to how Media Net works… from customer service.
i have an iphone.and i want to put prepaid on it. if i activate the sim in the prepaid phone and then put the sim in the iphone, will it work?
On an iPhone 3G that will work without any modification. If you have a first-generation iPhone, you will need to jailbreak it first, using PwnageTool.
i dont know if mines first gen or not. and is there a way to by pass the SIm card process and just use the iphone like an ipod touch?
How can I get an iPhone 3G and activate it on prepaid? Will they sale me the phone for 199 in the at&t store?
John, you need to either buy one on eBay, or open a standard AT&T account and cancel service.
Pat, iPhone 3G can be activated as an iPod using the QuickPwn and/or PwnageTool utilities.
Notice this update is as of February 13, 2009.
I had read reports of people getting their pick your plan and pay as you go working on the iPhone 3g from 2008,
but had not seen anything recent. Since I think that 2 year contracts are the bane of existence, I decided to take the risk and go for it.
I went to the ATT store and signed up for a “pick your plan” plan with a cheap $20 phone.
I then went out and got an iPhone on craigslist. The phone had a clean restore done on it and needed activation.
I took the SIM card out of my $20 phone and plopped it into the iPhone only to see a “Connect to Itunes” message.
I connected it to iTunes – no dice! I could not get passed activation. I jailbreaked it, but was unable to unlock it.
So i went down to the ATT store and got a blank SIM card – i did not tell them my phone # and i did not have them activate it.
I came home and dropped the fresh SIM card into my iPhone 3g and connected it to iTunes – and it took me passed the activation screen!
Then i took the SIM card from my $20 nokia and threw it into the iPhone. Success!
Now I’m running a jailbroken iPhone 3g on my pick your plan SIM and loving life.
The only issue now, for those that are not aware, is that ATT nixed the Unlimited MediaNet data plans – which means I can’t get data on my beloved iphone. However, I researched this before buying and was well aware of this – I plan on using it mostly on my WIFI.
In order to make sure I didn’t get any outrageous data costs – I SSH’d into my iPhone and updated the APN info so that theres no possible way for the iPhone to use data while its not on my wifi. All good!
Hope this helps some people out there…
[…] am an AT&T customer, and have been so since the weekend that the iPhone debuted. I am on an official iPhone GoPhone plan. I have paid monthly for two years and am up to date on said payments. After two years, AT&T […]
[…] am an AT&T customer, and have been so since the weekend that the iPhone debuted. I am on an official iPhone GoPhone plan. I have paid monthly for two years and am up to date on said payments. After two years, AT&T […]
[…] am an AT&T customer, and have been so since the weekend that the iPhone debuted. I am on an official iPhone GoPhone plan. I have paid monthly for two years and am up to date on said payments. After two years, AT&T […]
[…] am an AT&T customer, and have been so since the weekend that the iPhone debuted. I am on an official iPhone GoPhone plan. I have paid monthly for two years and am up to date on said payments. After two years, AT&T […]
I have a lg neon 365 gt at&t pay as u go. But i want to upgrade to the new iphone. However i hate contracts so can i keep my existing sim card with my unlimtd talk text and my 100mb of data and my #? I have read posts after posts but didnt find what i need to know. HELP ME!! THANKS Mike