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…But if they did, they wouldn’t be as good as iPhones.

So, 48 hours later and the “Activation and Porting Ordeal” is finally over. When I Activated my iPhone, O2 informed me it would take up to 5 business days to transfer my number (from o2 pay as you go) to my new iPhone Contract, but that they would provision me a temporary number, so I could get started playing with my iPhone straight away.. “Fair enough”, I thought.

A mere 16 hours later, I received an SMS from Facebook on my iPhone.. My number must have transfered. I checked, it had. Hurah!…. I thought.. A few minutes later, a “you have voicemail icon” appeared, but with no number in it. When I attempted to go to voicemail, my Visual Voicemail just plain refused to work. I hastily rang O2 (UK Based!) Tech Support, and was informed by the Apple Representative(!!!) that the O2 Network could not take the strain, and I should just wait until after the weekend. I rarely use voicemail, so I was not too bothered, although did feel somewhat put out. A few hours later I left the house, so naturally, got my iPhone out and hit “Safari”.
“Safari cannot open the web page because it cannot find the server”.. HMM. To the O2 Store! We tried to go the trafford centre on the way home, but we had no luck. Even hoping to park, on a Saturday, was foolish of us, so I rang O2 instead and we carried on our not so merry way.

After sounding puzzled, and sticking me on hold, the Apple Rep discovered that AT&T had encountered this problem also when porting AT&T numbers from AT&T to iPhone Accounts. The GPRS/Voicemail etc settings had not been setup. He told me a need to speak to O2, and put me through to them. I told the O2 woman what I wanted. Immediately her incompetence became evident. “You settings are automatically activated automatically”. Now, maybe if I had just asked for the features and not explained my whole situation, that would be a valid response, but I had told her everything. That it did work, that I’d spoke to Apple, that AT&T had the same problem, etc, etc. I re-iterated the point, and informed her more firmly that she would be provisioning Visual Voicemail, GPRS, and EDGE on my account. I was put on hold.
Ten minutes later or so, the annoying voice in my head ear returned, to inform me that she had made the necessary changes (but I thought no changes were necessary?) and that provisioning would take upto 24 hours (but I thought they were already provisioned?).

So. I am now left with an iPod Touch, that can make calls and send sms. Not really what I shelled out ¬£269 for, or why I’m paying ¬£45 a month, but there you go. 24.5 hours later and my GPRS/EDGE/Voicemail were still not working. I rang O2, again, and informed them of my unhappiness. The equally incompetent o2 iPhone team member attempted to patronise me. His first and only mistake. We finished up on the phone and a few minutes later everything started working.. The iPhone kicks ass. Can’t wait for a jailbreak