I was also sent from the AT&T store to activate my phone at home on iTunes but we couldn't access it. My husband has spent the day trying to get his phone activated, I'm just going to wait until I get home when hopefully things will be calmer. But in the meantime my old carrier has shut off my number so I'm phoneless!

It's the same in Canada.
Both Fido and Rogers are the providers of the iPhone... my boyfriend went to the mall and asked Fido for the phone-- their whole system was down due to so many activations happening.

i feel so bad for my boyfriend right now. he's a genius for apple and is probably having to deal with all this insanity.

Activation problems don't just affect new iPhone purchases. I installed the new 2.0 firmware on my original iPhone this morning. The install went fine, but the final step post installation is to activate. It didn't work, and I had to wait until I got into the office to try again. I finally managed to get it activated about 2 hours ago.

Not a good day for Apple.

i am having the same problem i am trying to update my phone and all i get is a itunes symbol a arrow and a plug...i am guessing it means to plug into itunes..but i cant do anything with it!!!! help i hate apple sooooo much right now!!!!

I had to unbrick at home. It took for-freaking-ever to get into itunes and start the setup, but I finally did it, and it's working beautifully.

I LOVE my iPhone!

okay i got mine to work...but i wonder compared to the original iphone is it really that much better? how does someone who has the new one feel?

I heard a lot of horror stories, but there were minimal activation issues at the store I went to.

I upgraded my original iphone to the 2.0 software this morning, and then spent several hours waiting for itunes to be able to find the itunes store. Once it finally found the store, it took another hour to activate and resync all my stuff, before I could start playing around with the new features.

For those who have downloaded the 2.0 patch but are stuck with your phone in "Emergency Number" only mode, here are the steps, from what I experienced this morning:

1. Start up itunes and plug your iphone into the computer. If you've downloaded the patch but not activated yet (ie, your phone is completely non-functional), itunes should recognize your phone as just "iphone" rather than whatever you had previously named it.

2. Click on your iphone under the "Devices" section of the itunes navigation bar. Again, it will probably be listed as just "iphone", not the name you gave it. When you click you won't get the normal page, with the options to sync, restore, check for updates, etc. Instead this is a completely blank page. The progress bar along the top should display a "wait a minute" striped bar as it tries to open the itunes store.

3. Many people are having trouble getting their itunes to connect to the patch area of the store (even if they can browse music no problem). If it can't connect, itunes will pop up a message saying it was unable to connect, and check your internet cable, etc. It's not your internet, it's their site.

4. If you get the above message, go to another area of itunes for a few minutes, and then click back on your iphone under Devices. This will make itunes try to connect to the store again. Chances are, it will still be unable to. Once you get the pop up, go to another area of itunes, and try again later.

Eventually itunes will be able to find the store, and reactivate your phone. Just keep trying until you don't get the "can't find it" message.

Once itunes finds the store, your iphone has to finish the updating process, which for me took about 15 minutes. You may or may not have to resync your music after that (I did, but I went through the process in an odd way), and then you should be up and running with 2.0!

Am I gonna hold the " Sugar record" for longest time invested?
I gambled and went to the Chestnut Street store and it ended up being close to 7 HOURS before I came out with a phone!!!!!!!!!!!

But its activated, its working, and I love it.... Now I just need a cocktail.

Row D — you had Sugar brethren in line with you! Who also, I might add, waited 7 hours.

I was in line at the Apple Store at Stanford Shopping Center (we arrived 7:30) and it's around 10:30 when we got in. We have a student discount in one of our lines and that was the reason why we took a long time to get our phone. AT&T wants everyone to cancel student and corporate discounts on the iphone plan (even if it was going to be a different cellphone number on our family plan).

They can't activate it in-store so they asked us to do it at home. Good thing as soon as we plugged in the iphone at home it activated. I downloaded a lot of apps yesterday as well without any problems