I’ve had this somewhat shaky iPhone 8 sitting here since the Hardware Fairy brought me an iPhone XR. Tonight I popped a prepaid SIM into it, thinking I’d turn it into a teen phone, a second device that can use various services that are on my main phone. I do have occasional visitors here and it would be handy to let them travel and spend a little money without leaving a trail of their own.
I reentered the setup process once the SIM was in, and I’ve been presented with this:
It won’t work with text. It won’t work with a phone call.
The last couple years my experience has been that a new phone and new SIM will be sufficient for the touchy signup procedures on various services to let me pass. I experienced a bit of a fail with that theory last year, and if this is actually the new normal, and not something very specific to my setup …
That doesn’t make sense - the world is full of people who have prepaid phone service, and creating an Apple ID isn’t THAT big of a deal, is it?
There are times where phones will insist on having a wifi connection. I don’t think that’s about saving cellular data, I think it’s putting the device in context - forcing it to fit into some existing network of devices and people. I used to keep two AT&T burners so I could have each of them hotspot the other.
Time passes …
It isn’t recognized as a hotspot via USB on a Mac.
It’s not providing service via USB as a bridge on Linux.
No WiFi hotspot.
Put the SIM back into an Android.
Only getting IPv6 address on the Android.
This should be prepaid through the end of September.
Android wifi hotspot entitlement check just clocking.
I’ve had to play radio engineer a lot this summer - dying devices, really high noise floor due to all the other boats, captive WiFi AP for the sake of NAT via my workstation just would NOT behave no matter what I did.
We’re past technology, I’m going to burn some sage in here next.