A bug is preventing some Android and iPhone users from texting each other. Customer complaints indicate that the bug adds a plus sign to the beginning of phone numbers. This problem is limited to the U.S. and mainly affects AT&T customers, though AT&T may not be responsible for this issue.
Reddit threads complaining about the bug began cropping up on the morning of May 18th. Shortly thereafter, 9to5Mac reported on the complaints, prompting several responses from readers who are also impacted.
A plus symbol at the beginning of a phone number indicates its international routing. If you were to text the phone number (712)-345-6789, this bug would turn it into +7 (123)-456-789—a nonsense number with the Russian (+7) international code.
Here’s the good news; this bug should be fixed soon. And you may be able to circumvent the problem by manually adding an international code to affected numbers. If you’re in the United States, that means adding a +1 before a number’s area code.
Note that Review Geek cannot reproduce this bug, so we cannot actively test it. The solution I’m sharing with you is based on a mix of assumptions and research into the issue. I can’t promise that it’ll work.
As for the bug’s origin, there are two theories. The first is that AT&T screwed something up—this bug mainly affects AT&T customers, but I’ve seen a few complaints from customers on Google Fiber, Verizon, and T-Mobile, so AT&T may not be at fault.
The second theory is that this bug originated in the iOS 16.5 update, which began its rollout on May 18th. Seeing as the problem only occurs when texting between iOS and Android, this isn’t such a bad theory. But I strongly doubt that all of these people downloaded iOS 16.5 within a few hours of its release.
So, needless to say, this story is developing. Feel free to email [email protected] if you have any information that may be useful. We’re also reaching out to AT&T for any information it may offer.
Source: Reddit via 9to5Mac
