Yesterday (September 1st) I bought a prepaid SIM card in the Telekom store at Hertztraße, in Heidelberg. I was swapping from O2 as it doesn't have service at work, but I wanted to keep my mobile phone number, so I had sent O2 a request to release my phone number one day earlier. They sent me a text message to confirm that my phone number was being released.

At the Telekom store, I bought a 10 Euro prepaid SIM-card. I had brought my passport and proof of residence in Heidelberg and everything seemed to be going well. The staff member told me that my purchase was a success, I signed a contract, and he said it might take up to 10 days for the phone number to get transferred over from O2.

Later that day, I inserted the sim card into my phone. I have a NordPlus CE 5G android phone but didn´t have an issue with the O2 SIM card. When I inserted the Telekom card, the phone asked if I wanted to install some required apps or settings for the Telekom SIM card, which I agreed to do and happened automatically. I then restarted my phone as I was instructed to do. However, I noticed after I activated my phone that there was no service, and when I went into my SIM card setting, It said "no services" under network and the signal strength is 0 even though a different SIM card using the Telekom network works. I noticed that the ICCID given is the correct card number for the SIM, but it says phone number unknown. I tried using a different SIM-slot and I carefully wiped off the surface (even though the card was new), but nothing fixed it.

To investigate it further, I looked up how to activate it, and on this link it said to create an account with the MyMagenta app. However, when it came to the verification step, the app told me "that didn't work! Please activate your prepaid card at www.telekom.de/prepaid-aktivierung". Looking at this link, I changed my API settings so that my username was telecom instead of telekom, and I changed the password to "tm". However, the problem persisted. I next went onto my online Telenor account and tried to add money to the mobile phone number. However, when I did that, I got the error message "Mistake! The phone number cannot be charged" (original: Fehler! Diese telefonnummer kann nicht aufgeladen werden.)

I don't know what more I can do since I only have the one phone. Based on my reading, my new phone number should work fine with the prepaid SIM until my old phone number is transferred over, but perhaps I need to wait until the number gets transferred. If that is not the issue, I really do not know what I can do as I need to have a phone that works.