950 XL no LTE on AT&T?

[snakebitten]

An advanced AT&T customer support rep managed to activate LTE on my 950XL with the 950XL's IMEI number.

That's really good news and even more encouraging that AT&T will get this solved as they see THOUSANDS of new 950XLs in the hands of THEIR customers. I'm not someone who thinks AT&T doesn't want customers with 950XLs, even if they are unlocked. They don't need to protect themselves from us since we don't owe them $HUNDREDS for hardware subsidies.

 

[coolbreeze78]

Guys I'm telling you. All you need to do is find an IMEI of a branded ATT LTE phone. Call ATT and tell them you got a new phone. Give them that IMEI. Reboot and enjoy LTE.

Their system is very particular and will not serve up LTE if the IMEI is from an unlocked phone. Has to be a recognized ATT IMEI.

I'm dead serious. Just go to Best Buy or a wireless store and find a display unit. Take a picture of the IMEI. Give that to ATT support. Do not mention 950XL. Just act like you are adding whatever branded LTE phone the IMEI corresponds to. You won't have to worry about it again as your line is correctly provisioned from here on out, even if you put your SIM in another unlocked LTE phone.

 

[Dusteater]

Question: Even when getting your SIM properly provisioned, what features still won't work? How about internet sharing and Wi-Fi calling? It sounds like visual voicemail won't work, can anyone confirm? Sounds to me like a lot of sacrifices to have an unlocked phone.

 

[muddtt]

Okay, so that Microsoft phone number is probably a waste of time. They are closed for tonight anyways. I contacted ATT chat again and I tried to get them to re-provision the new nanosim to an iPhone 6. The guy said that the new nano-sim I have had moved to an unlimited plan without 4g. He said he had to create a case for me in order for ATT create an unlimited-LTE plan for my 950xl. So i'm guessing its basically what ShadowMario3 had done for him by the advanced rep. Oh well, hopefully it can get done quick...or maybe i'll stop by a physical store or call to see if they can do it.

 

[chsoriano]

Daniel,
You'll be happy to hear that once I used my brothers iphone 5 (I hate saving that) to activate the nano sim everything works well. Blazing fast LTE.

I may have to try this tomorrow... is there any risk of messing up the configuration on the iPhone (e.g., imessage) by doing this? Did you simply insert your nano sim, boot up the iPhone, verify LTE, then turn it off and put it your 950XL?

 

[muddtt]

I may have to try this tomorrow... is there any risk of messing up the configuration on the iPhone (e.g., imessage) by doing this? Did you simply insert your nano sim, boot up the iPhone, verify LTE, then turn it off and put it your 950XL?

I think you have to get ATT to pair the sim to the phone. You can't just stick it in the phone and put it back in the 950xl.

 

[coolbreeze78]

Question: Even when getting your SIM properly provisioned, what features still won't work? How about internet sharing and Wi-Fi calling? It sounds like visual voicemail won't work, can anyone confirm? Sounds to me like a lot of sacrifices to have an unlocked phone.

Internet sharing works fine if your plan supports it.

WiFi ccalling is only on the iPhone. No other ATT device at all.

Visual voicemail isn't currently working.

 

[oldpueblo]

Internet sharing works fine if your plan supports it.

WiFi ccalling is only on the iPhone. No other ATT device at all.

Visual voicemail isn't currently working.

I can confirm that hotspot works. However I also noticed on the AT&T 950 I used that there is a section that showed settings for HD calling (I don't recall the exact verbage).

 

[Thorgal Aegirsson]

Hey guys,
I just spent an hour with ATT reps and I got it working. 50 minutes of that was with a guy number 1 and that was completely unsuccessful. As soon as he heard Lumia 950XL he said - this device doesn't support LTE and it will never work. I was stubborn and told him that it's not the phone problem because my other phones (Lumia 920 and 635) were working perfectly fine on LTE until yesterday but as soon as I got this new nanoSIM they stopped. Eventually I managed to convince him that it's their problem and virtually forced him to link the SIM card to my Lumia 635's IMEI. He claimed he did that but it didn't work. So, I called again and spoke to another guy. This time I just said that I replaced my SIM and my phone stopped working. I gave him IMEI of Lumia 635 and 5 minutes later everything started working fine. BTW, he said that the first guy didn't link 635 with the SIM. Clearly he didn't know much what he was doing. Then I put the SIM into Lumia 950XL and it's working and it is fast.

Long story short - call those a**holes and give them IMEI from your old phone but DO NOT mention Lumia 950 XL - obviously they know about them and just refuse to fix the issue.
As for the visual voicemail - I still didn't manage to make it work but I'm assuming and hoping that it will be the same as on my Lumia 635 with Win10 - after a while it will just pop up asking for the password.

 

[tedj101]

swapping sims should work fine. the "activation" at&t does is literally programming a new sim and plugging it in.

The 640XL is a micro sim. You will need a nano sim. I just took mine to the AT&T store, they gave me a new sim and activated it right then and there. About 3 minutes total.

<TED>

 

[anon(5383410)]

Doesn't surprise me that AT&T is giving people a hard time with the XL. They stuck their neck out with the 950 and would rather you buy that if you insist in burying Microsoft

 

[Adam Frix]

I can confirm that hotspot works. However I also noticed on the AT&T 950 I used that there is a section that showed settings for HD calling (I don't recall the exact verbage).

You'll want to turn HD calling OFF to fix problems with MMS (and one other thing, I forget which).

 

[jt09xlt]

So say I go out rather than dealing with ATT support and buy a 640 to have as a backup and its super cheap and give them that IMEI to program sim and then throw that sim in my xl it will work?

 

[coolbreeze78]

So say I go out rather than dealing with ATT support and buy a 640 to have as a backup and its super cheap and give them that IMEI to program sim and then throw that sim in my xl it will work?

That is correct. As long as AT&T has a branded AT&T LTE IMEI listed on your account, LTE will work on the XL. Do not tell then anything about the XL. They don't need to know you have this phone (or any unlocked device). Telling them you have the XL will only create confusion and break the data provisioning once they enter the XL IMEI (because it will come up as a generic unlocked 4G phone). If you give them one of the two XL's IMEI numbers, your phone will not get LTE, it will be stuck on 4G.

If you don't want to buy a phone you may not use, just to to WalMart and find an AT&T 640 package. Look at the bottom of the package and take a picture of the IMEI. Call AT&T and give then that IMEI. It doesn't affect anything (i.e. it won't "tie" that device to your account, it only enables LTE provisioning).

This needs to be clarified on the front page. It's a really simple solution that's being muddied with confusion. I don't know why AT&T's system is so particular about this kind of thing, but it just is.

 

[chsoriano]

Okay, I'm going to give them a call and ask them to provision my sim for my old Lumia 1020 then. That should work, right? Or should I use the IMEI of my Lumia 635 because it's newer?

Both are ATT branded so I don't think it should matter based on everything that'd been said so far.

 

[coolbreeze78]

Okay, I'm going to give them a call and ask them to provision my sim for my old Lumia 1020 then. That should work, right? Or should I use the IMEI of my Lumia 635 because it's newer?

Both are ATT branded so I don't think it should matter based on everything that'd been said so far.

Either device will work. Just needs an ATT logo on it.

 

[muddtt]

So I did exactly as you guys described and it works.

1) Write down you sim card #
2) Write down an IMEI number from any ATT LTE phone (Not the 950xl)
3) chat with ATT online and say you got a new phone and data isn't working
4) ATT will ask for sim and Imei number. They will do their thing
5) They will ask you to turn your phone on after they are done.
6) BAM...LTE. make sure your wifi is off to check.

 

[chsoriano]

Yuo, this just worked for me! Gave then the IMEI from my Lumia 1020, and 5 mins later LTE was working on my 950 XL.

Daniel, please put a post/article about this! This was so frustrating, can finally stop thinking about this and enjoy the holiday .

Have a good thanksgiving everyone!

 

[SvenJ]

Just to add a data point. Got my XL last night, and set it up over WiFi. Grabbed an AT&T SIM out of another device (Nexus 6), and threw it in. LTE works just fine. Shows LTE in the status bar (with WiFi off) and I'm getting 10M up, 5 down. Not stellar but typical. So the XL absolutely supports LTE. Guess we just need AT&T to get it sorted out. I'll be going to a store tomorrow to get a new SIM (the 1020 I'm replacing has a Micro not Nano SIM). We'll see how that goes. I have 11 lines with them, they should treat me well.

 

[alphamang]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Like most of the folks here I too had issues with LTE out of the box but got things resolved without the assistance of ATT.

Details below:
I had a Nokia Lumia 920 with an unlimited data place since the old iPhone 3G days - My SIM was replaced a few years ago for a new MicroSIM format. My 9th and 10th numbers on my SIM are 25. I eventually cut this down - more on this later.

1. I unboxed my brand new phone and immediately turned it on. No SIM inserted.
2. I went through the initial setup of the phone while connecting it to Wifi. Again, with no SIM inserted!
3. I chose the option to restore my settings from a phone backup.
4. I allowed all the apps to download and settings to update, etc etc. The phone was "functional" at this point so... I shutdown.
5. I cut my MicroSIM down to a NanoSIM and inserted it into SIM 1.
6. Turned the phone on.
7. I turned off wifi
8. Panic! z0mg! No LTE, whyyyyyy?!?!?!one!. I see E for edge... and I have reception... but no data at all! I immediately begin to troubleshoot why my data connection woes.
9. Come to find out I couldn't make calls or receive calls; and texts were extremely slow to send/receive.
10. Checked my APN settings against my old Lumia 920 and they were identical. Proceeded to try other APN settings from this very thread. All failed (multiple reboots after each change).
11. At this point I was worried I messed up my MicroSIM -> NanoSIM cut ... and I didn't have another phone to test my NanoSIM sized MicroSIM! So I thought I goofed really, really bad. Then... I did what any logical person would do: I started over with the factory reset and the SIM inserted.
12. Once the reset was complete I proceeded to perform the new setup again and this time I skipped the WiFi connection.
13. After the setup finished I noticed that I had LTE! I checked my APN settings from there and found that they looked exactly the same prior to the hard reset.. which is exactly how my Lumia 920 was configured!
14. Success. LTE on ATT! Happy Dance. z0mg Windows Hello is neat but quite gimmicky but so fun to just unlock a phone by looking at it.

TL;DR:
Do a factory reset with and activated SIM already inserted and run through the new phone setup!