iPad "Mobile Data Number" shows as "Unknown": Why?

[photeks]

As per the title, I have three new-ish iPads I own outright (two M4 Pro's, one Mini 7), and they all have pre-paid eSIMS in them from UK network Three – the "24 Gigs for 24-months" physical pSIMS you can buy online, that I had to call customer services, who then converted them all to eSIMS a couple of months ago (as the iPads only take eSIMS now).

I noticed that whilst data works fine on each iPad, annoyingly I cannot see the data eSIM's actual number in the settings where it used to show with previous identical pSIMS — under: General - About - Mobile Data Number, it simply says "Unknown" in that field.

While I know this is nothing to do with messages and related features which are pushed from my iPhone, it's still really annoying when I do something like phone Three's customer services or similar reasons like wanting to check my data allowance left, and cannot simply check the data phone number in this section anymore, because it's not there.

I first phoned Three a couple of times (who were clueless unfortunately, and they also refused to report it further up the chain as a bug, for reasons they wouldn't tell me, so is unlikely to see a fix accordingly?!) and they didn't have any ideas on why it was showing "Unknown" (my Network Provider above this section shows "Three 63.0" if that's pertinent here?).

Is there any way to get the number to show anymore? If not is there some reason for it to not show?

[photeks]

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@JonathanB wrote:

I don't know that this is a particularly common issue, or that it's been reported to our phone teams? If there's other reports on the Community or elsewhere, please help us out with a link, and we'll be happy to highlight the feedback.

@JonathanB - While I don't know how common this is either, I have the issue on all three iPads I have your eSIMs in, and I have reported this to your phone customer services a number of times, with no resolution. I have seen some other threads across the net about this happening on Three eSIMS – though I can't find them now, annoyingly! 

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@JonathanB wrote:

We've raised this issue to relevant contacts, and will let you know if we're able to give any further advice. but the cause of the issue remains to be determined, so I don't know how long it'll necessarily take to resolve this, if it is indeed an issue on our end.

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OK, well at least it's known about, but surely Three should at least be finding-out and confirming to your customers whether this is Three's issue or not? 

Perhaps you can confirm whether a phone number should appear there fro your eSIMs in the first place? As I've had tens of this exact pre-paid Three "24 gigs for 24 months" SIM as pSIMS, and they always showed the number in this section, because a phone number is always needed to both connect to any carrier network (voice+data or data-only ones), along with the customer needing to call customer services to deal with account issues after they're setup (we don't need to create the optional online accounts for these one-use SIMS – people simply throw away after finished and get another). 

As I said, other carrier networks eSIMs show a number there, hence strange Three's are not doing so. 

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@jr0 wrote:

I have a question. You said you got psims and then support converted the psims into esims. Was the psims phone number the same as is now in the esims?

There's no way of knowing that, because after getting the data pSIMs delivered, they don't have a phone number assigned to them until inserted and set-up in your device. But as my modern iPads do not take pSIMs at all now, I had to call Three, read them the 89xxxxxxxxxxx serial#, and they emailed the eSIM to me to open & setup on each iPad. 

As said above, other carrier networks eSIMs show a number there, hence likely a Three issue. But their technical teams seemingly don't seem to know themselves why their numbers are not shown on these pre-paid eSIMs. Leaving their customers somewhat in the lurch here. 

[jr0]

Hi

I'd say that Three support could tell you the 3 phone numbers (MSISDN) of the psims/esims and then you can know wether the phone number remained the same or not. And if those are still the same, perhaps that is the problem, as the phone number is oftenly written on the sim, and perhaps when support swapped the psims to esims the phone number is/was not written.

When you get to know the phone numbers, I reckon it's quite easy to use Three app for each number and from there "View allowances" -> "Data" -> view "full data usage". In my case the usage looks like is updated every few minutes/hours in case you are in the UK (not sure when in roaming).

How do you know that other carriers show the esim phone number for data sims on ipads 100% of the time? are you assuming or did you test it?

[photeks]

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@jr0 wrote:

I'd say that Three support could tell you the 3 phone numbers (MSISDN) of the psims/esims and then you can know wether the phone number remained the same or not. And if those are still the same, perhaps that is the problem, as the phone number is oftenly written on the sim, and perhaps when support swapped the psims to esims the phone number is/was not written.

When you get to know the phone numbers, I reckon it's quite easy to use Three app for each number and from there "View allowances" -> "Data" -> view "full data usage". In my case the usage looks like is updated every few minutes/hours in case you are in the UK (not sure when in roaming).

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The phone number is not written on the pre-paid pSIMs or its packaging anywhere. I already explained that a number is assigned when setup. 

Obviously, I already know the numbers, as that's not the issue being discussed here. The issue (and the subject of this thread's title!) is they do not appear in section where they should; instead they only show "Unknown" – for reasons even Three technical clearly don't have a handle on at all. 

@jr0 wrote:

How do you know that other carriers show the esim phone number for data sims on ipads 100% of the time? are you assuming or did you test it?

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Yes, obviously I have tested others. No one can ever be 100% sure there are not other carriers eSIMs who also have the issue. But what we can be sure of, is that this is a problem with some/all of Three eSIMs, as previously explained – given I have not just one but three of them in use right now all displaying the problem. 

[Maxine]

We're really sorry for the delay in getting back to you, photeks. We've gotten in touch with another team for more details on this.

As soon as we have more information, we'll be in touch. 

Maxine

[photeks]

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@Maxine wrote:

We're really sorry for the delay in getting back to you, photeks. We've gotten in touch with another team for more details on this.

As soon as we have more information, we'll be in touch. 

Maxine

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Been two weeks. Any update, @Maxine? 

[JonathanB]

Hi @photeks,

We're still waiting for a detailed update we can share, but a colleague has raised the issue with Apple, so we'll hopefully have more info we can share here soon. Thanks for your patience.

Jonathan

[jr0]

so is the psim's phone number the same as in the esim?

[photeks]

We're going round in circles here. Refer to my previous answer: 

@photeks wrote:

There's no way of knowing that, because after getting the data pSIMs delivered, they don't have a phone number assigned to them until inserted and set-up in your device. But as my modern iPads do not take pSIMs at all now, I had to call Three, read them the 89xxxxxxxxxxx serial#, and they emailed the eSIM to me to open & setup on each iPad. 

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Can you leave this for Three to answer please, as only they can know what the possible technical issue they're having causing this issue. 

[jr0]

 I hope you are special enough to have this petty fight/problem solved. After all, you are having the service promised/paid and not the user experience that you wish for.
By the tone of your arguments I think I can imagine how the conversations went with techinical support agents.
I reckon like in any other organization Three has bigger fish to fry.
Good luck