Apple Watch 3 won’t connect to the ATT cellular network

I have had the same problem.  Just to be extra careful I took my new series 3 watch to the ATT Sfore for activation.  After three hours I had to head Home and still no cellular.  This weekend I was in Dallas at the Apple store and after 4 hours of trouble shooting there they walked over to the ATT store with me and 45 min later still no cellular connection. I don’t believe I should be charged for cellular service for my watch until it is operational.  They should have had all of this worked out prior to roll out.  Will probably return watch.  Cellular was the only reason I purchased it in the first place.

Return the watch immediately, as Apple extends a “two weeks no questions asked” return policy. It is October 10, 2017 as I write this, and the cellular/iWatch “number sync” problem has not yet been resolved.  I spent approximately 6 hours in my local AT&T store yesterday,  in Seattle Washington, where three dedicated AT&T senior employees stayed after hours on the telephone with AT&T’s “advanced technical support“ to try and resolve the issue.  While AT&T “advanced technical support” has been tasked with the challenge of resolving this serious issue/flaw it is apparent that after 6 hours of troubleshooting, they are simply experimenting with the issue and have no clear fix on hand. I give credit to the three store employees who tried to help, but all of us were left shaking our heads at the inefficiencies of the AT&T “advanced technical support” who mercilessly, and repetitively, subjected us to multiple re-booting, and re-logging in, exercises without any seeming conscious or professional regard for our time, sanity, or dignity. 6 hours is ridiculous.

This is a unconscionably poor rollout of the new product/service that should have been honed at AT&T’s and Apple’s higher  corporate/technical levels before hitting the consumer. Instead, the companies have embroiled unwitting and loyal consumers in an untested rollout. That said, the AT&T representatives at the store were at least gracious and humble enough to acknowledge that it was an AT&T problem, in as much as the Apple hardware was not in question. 

Return the watch while you can, and send the message back to the top. Purchase again after you return to this message board and see that the number sync issue has conclusively been resolved. Let the corporations get it right before your time and energy is devoured. You bought an iWatch 3, not a golden ticket to be a beta tester. 

I spent 2.5 hours at the Apple Store yesterday. They dialed in to ATT Advanced tech support and finally got it working! The fix was simple. They just had to change my user ID. I was getting frustrated because at one point an error code popped up saying my “I was denied access due to my credit worthiness”. Really ATT I clearly have already paid for the watch AND Added the $10 cellular plan. I immediately logged on to see if they had ran my credit and they had not. I would really like to know why that particular error code even popped up. Needless to say I will definitely think twice before purchasing a new device from ATT because their customer service and resolution specialist score an F in my book! 

“They just had to change my user ID?”

Dear SassyMaxine:   Following your successful celluIar set-up, l returned to AT&T store today and they still could not get ANYBODY’S  (ie.,not just my iWatch 3) Apple iWatch 3 to number sync with cell service. I showed them your post indicating that they just had to change user ID. Unfortunately, that did not work. By the way, what user ID, specifically, are you referring to? Apple user ID? Your AT&T user ID? Or something else?  If you happen to remember the specific steps that were taken that resulted in success, it would be great if you could list them in detail here.

Or, since this is a community board perhaps the AT&T or Apple representative who assisted you could finally post the specific instructions needed for all other AT&T and Apple representatives to correct the issue as outlined by the many other dissatisfied users on this board having the same iWatch/cellular problem.

The AT&T representatives attempting to help me at my Seattle location have vowed to call me back in two days with more information concerning a fix, or the continued absence of a fix. So, I will keep the watch for two more days and repost then, hopefully, with a story of success. So far, it continues to be a box of rocks...

@LegacyClient   In order to use number sync, each person must make a user account with ATT with a user ID and password.  It is this ATT ID and password you use to login and use number sync.  

https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1008917

I already had a user ID and password and was using it for ATT messages.  I had to change my password to get number sync to work.  

Apple really messed this one up....

lizdance: Kudos for the assist. Each piece puts the puzzle together. Unfortunately, in the six hours I spent at AT&T the first time around the representatives there set me up with AT&T access ID, AT&T preferred ID, and then had me change both IDs, after they both didn’t work for cellular number sync. Then, we did it all again, rebooting both my iwatch 3 and my iPhone each time. We did a lot in 6 hours. It’s seems that the path they were on was the path you took to success. It just didn’t work for us. Another  requirement was to wait “up to two hours“ for access ID changes to take effect that would purportedly allow number sync to occur. We have observed these two hour waiting periods to no avail either. At this point, i’m just waiting for more consumers to go through the iWatch-number-sync-slapping-machine before I return to AT&T in two days to see if epiphanies, revelations, or blind luck have paved a better way. Thanks for your info. 

The user ID was for my ATT account. 

Once they reset my user ID they unpaired my watch from my cell. Then they restarted both the phone and the watch and then repaired them. Once that was done they were able to activate the cellular plan on my watch via the number sync. 

I hope this helps! 

I had a watch that paired to the AT&T network on WatchOS 4.0.0.

I then updated to WatchOS 4.0.1, cellular didn't work. I spent 5 hours fiddling with stuff and an hour going to the AT&T store.

What eventually fixed it was that I erased all the data on my watch, then unpaired the watch (about 3-5 minutes) and re-paired it to my iPhone (about 10 minutes). Everything came back up, and it's back working again.