Airtel or iOs issue? (Primary) Your sim sent a text message.

After switching from the iPhone 10 to 12 , been getting the attached message on and off, atleast 6-8 times a day. I haven't been billed by Airtel for them, but Airtel pushes the issue on iPhone and vice versa. Online, people say it is a carrier issue, with the phone trying to contact carrier for a carrier update. Just today the carrier version got updated to 45.0 and I thought the issue will go away, but same is happening.
I am not using an e-sim, but a physical sim in the phone. I don't want to move to an e-sim for the convenience that physical sim offers.

Hi, i am facing the exact same issue when i upgraded from iPhone SE to iPhone 12 mini. I contacted airtel and they suggested to get my sim swapped which will cost me somewhere around 25 INR and they are not sure if that will work.
I am just curious @riteshritesh, did you moved your data from previous iPhone to new one or you set it up as a new device?
I am expecting it is related to restoring data from different iphone and some validation confusion at their end.
Changing sim will reset the validation at their end and might solve the issue actually.
In the meantime if you have found any other solution please do update the thread.

Hi. I saw your reply on the Apple Communities too.🙂
Don't bother changing your sim. Nothing happens, other than Airtel making money. If you want to try, switch to an e-sim and try it out. Yes, I transferred old data to this one and wouldn't/dont want to start afresh for whatever reason.
If on prepaid, check if they are deducting your money. On my postpaid, they haven't charged anything in the last month's bill, other than Rs 5, which I think is for whatsapp/imessage activation. Will keep a track when this month's bill is generated. The recent update to iOs and carrier network version, has made things worse and the frequency has increased. I am on the 6.1 inch iPhone 12.
P.S. I had tweeted to AirtelPresence, they called and asked me whether it happens on other iPhones. When I said no, they said contact Apple as it is their issue. I bugged them by saying, it only happens with Airtel users and whether I should port out, to which they had no answer.

Since when is airtel charging for Sim change 😳

@riteshritesh , this problem will go away once you switch to Esim. I faced similar problem back in Feb march this year before I switched to Esim. And this problem was solved. Airtel SIM has some bug. No point in replacing another physical SIM. Airtel is aggressively programming it's new SIM offlate to read device and doing other troubleshooting for better user experience but it is buggy and create more issue than solving..

Yeah, switched to an esim last evening. Hoping that the issue has gone away.

FaceTime and iMessage activation involves sending a text message. It is possible that your phone is trying activate both and somehow failing. Open Settings, navigate to Messages and see if iMessage is successfully activated.

No, turned off imessaging for the timebeing, as sms service is suspended for 24 hrs. Will try it tonight.

I am facing this same issue the day I ported my network from Vi to Airtel. If I insert the new SIM to any other devices than my current iPhone 12 mini then it works perfectly fine. SMS and iMessage both work in iPhone XR but not with iPhone 12 mini. I'm just wondering whether they missed setting up the message centre number correctly while porting. If that's the case, I don't see any Settings available in iPhone 12 where I can manually feed in the correct number. So confused and irritated now.

In my experience, the random "SIM sent message" happens infrequently and is related to communication between SIM and network. This has nothing to do with iMessage, that is a separate pop-up.

You cannot feed the number manually because your iPhone already has proper settings it needs to understand and work with Airtel.

If iMessage is not working on the 12 mini, please go to Settings > Messages and toggle iMessage OFF and back ON after a few seconds. You will get a pop-up to enable Facetime and iMessage, Accept it.

Another thing - ever since unlimited free calling and 100 free SMS, we do not have the need to have some amount of money as prepaid balance. Please recharge with some amount to get prepaid balance, and then you will be able to activate iMessage on the new device - that is because that activation process sends an International SMS costing INR 5 which you would not have in your prepaid balance today, generally speaking. It is advisable to recharge with INR 100, that will give you about INR 87 as balance. This balance will also come in handy when you want to call 1-800 or 1860 numbers (usually your bank call centres) as these are chargeable in Airtel and Vi both.

If you are wondering why is it that you might not have had to recharge for your Xr, that's because when you get a new number or when you port into Airtel, you get INR 5 as prepaid balance. The Xr would have consumed that and activated iMessage. Now, the 12 mini does not have any balance to use.

I tried above steps just now, but iMessage and Facetime is not getting activated on my iPhone 12 Mini with Vi Prepaid sim having annual pack. I also have Rs. 8 talktime balance.
But since nobody uses iMessage or Facetime, and the SIM card in iPhone 12 Mini is just for backup purpose, so I have not bothered to check why iMessage is not getting activated so far.

This is not at all awkward. 😂

Just realised that after porting VI number to Jio I forgot to check about iMessage and Facetime activation.
I now found out that both are activated without any errors.
It strange how things works seamlessly with Jio while it struggles on Airtel and VI.