Solution: iPhone iMessage won’t activate. Keeps saying “verifying” then failed to connect to server.

I solved an issue with iMessage not activating – just kept saying “verifying” then failed to connect to server.

This is with an iPhone without a SIM card.

Forget all WiFi networks. Set up Personal Hotspot on another phone which uses the same mobile network as the problem iPhone is locked to i.e. o2.

Then forget all WiFi networks on that phone too.

Connect the ‘problem iPhone’ to the other iPhone’s hotspot and the verification will work.

This seems to trick iMessage in verifying without a SIM card.

The problem may have occurred because I use Three as my broadband provider. So verification over WiFi was not working.