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Apple Watch LTE with Verizon business

I received my LTE watch but Verizon now says it is not compatible with my business cell phone plan. I work for a large company. Verizon identified it as a national account.

Do you plan to change the technical setup preventing my usage and allow my plan to use NumberShare? If so what is the time frame? Should people like me return our phones while we still have the return window or is a fix from Verizon coming soon?

Comments

Verizon_Support

Congratulations on your new Apple Watch, JaceLarson. NumberShare does have account restrictions, which would be identified by the account type that your company has. To determine eligibility, please contact your company's account point of contact or account manager.

AndreaS_VZW

If my response answered your question please click the "Correct Answer" button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

JaceLarson

MaiTaiGuy

It's rather frustrating that those of us on large business plans are prevented from activating the watch. I would be willing to pay the monthly charged, but have no options to. My company isn't going to change thousands of numbers for just a few people interested in AW3. Surely, Verizon has the ability to change this requirement. Options like this should just be included with large accounts.

Bssoap74

I was super excited to get my Apple Watch 3 w/cellular to find out that my Verizon Business plan is not supported. It seems that most cellular carriers are not supporting the business plan, which seems like this was not discussed at all. I am very disappointed that I know own the cellular watch, with no way to connect to cellular. It seems that Apple and Verizon would have a lot of customers on Business plans and will be losing out of business because of this and have to deal with product returns. Please tell me that there is a plan to add numbershare to Business plans.

tech_chris

As of Sept 15, Business accounts can now be enabled with NumberShare -- I purchased 3 Gear S3 devices last week and finally got them fully working with NumberShare (on my Business Account) yesterday.

MaiTaiGuy

Did you mean October 15?

I really hope Verizon came around on this. If it's true, I'll be making my order ASAP!

tech_chris

No, I mean Sept 15 -- Anyone that told you after Sept 15 that NumberShare could not be enabled on Business Accounts was not properly informed.

And just a heads up.. Being this has only been enabled for a little more then 1 month, there are some misc provisioning errors that have been experienced.

When I bought my devices a week or so ago, I met my Business Rep at a local VZW store. Apparently, they did not properly enable NumberShare before the watches were activated over the LTE network. So when I went to use my watch, only text/notification sharing was working (which is via Samsung Gear app and remote connectivity being enabled).. calling from my watch still showed the watches phone number instead of my host device number.

After working with Tier 2 support on the phone, we finally got everything working. They deactivated the watches, assigned new numbers, submitted the NumberShare feature to bind with my host device (which this time they got a message saying it was successfully enabled), and THEN reactivated the watch -- and actually they did all this remotely without me even having to power cycle the watch during the deactivation/reactivation on different number.

NOW the NumberShare feature is working as expected -- I usually do not keep my watch connected to my phone via bluetooth (only when I'm installing apps, etc.) -- instead my watch is connected remotely to my phone (over LTE and the Remote Connect feature), and I'm able to share text messages, notifications, and calls between devices. When I place a call from my watch, it now properly shows my host device phone number.

And yes, you need to be on a current plan -- I was on the New Verizon Plan (shared 30GB between my devices), which supported the NumberShare -- however, I decided to go ahead and move to the new Beyond Unlimited plan as I was able to save a bit per month.

DTvzwLTE

I mean no offense by this, but when you say "business plan" I take it you are on a consumer-level type plan that happens to be under a business tax ID rather than a social. Right? 30GB shared and having a business rep in your comments is why I take this to be. The issue many are having with Verizon and AppleWatchLTE activation are on an enterprise-level business plan. Are THOSE also compatible with NumberShare? My discussions with Tier2 tech October 1 leads me to believe absolutely NO enterprise-level business account is on this.

MaiTaiGuy

That's what I'm afraid of. I called a few weeks ago and was told not possible currently.

Verizon, allow numbershare and most of us will pay separately. That will open the service to many more people. Better yet, just include in enterprise level plans at no additional cost!

DTvzwLTE

That would be ideal, but I have the feeling in my gut it will be at least WatchOS5 before Apple makes fundamental changes in the LTE activation process. I get that they are trying to make it "just work", but as more and more people are discovering the major carriers are treating it as an additional phone line, and therefore incurring typical phone taxes and fees, the cost in the US is a bit more than being let on.

All I wanted was the AppleWatch to be treated like a standalone data plan, like the iPad, that syncs to your other devices via iCloud. All over LTE. I don't care if that limits the phone/sms functionality a bit (though I don't see why if an iPad can receive the same calls or texts).

So, my gut feeling is there are some kickbacks Apple is getting like Blackberry used to back in the day that goes above a standard data plan.

MaiTaiGuy

I would doubt there is any kick back going on, but of course don't know. I think Apple would have been ecstatic if there was no additional costs through the carriers.

I think the major issue is actually standard text messages and phone calls. I don't get regular text messages on my ipad unless my ipad and iphone are on the same wifi network. Plus can't make regular phone calls on an ipad. The way they are marketing the watch it has to be capable of phone calls (even though I understand the phone calls are actually VOIP, but not facetime audio.

Verizon can fix if they just allowed numbershare on these plans and had a way to bill people separately if needed.

Andriomg

I work for a hige corp, ans Verizon is having the same problem where they are bot capable of allowing thw numshare

my company did all they could

paid

cretaed differente nums

talked to support level 2, escalated

ans verizon dont know what they are doing

me and over 100 friends will move to At&t that can do their jobs and make the warch work

shame on verizon

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