I have had my 7135 since September 2003, 2 days ago it displayed “Initial Programming Needed”
If I dial *228 and press 1 it takes about 60 seconds to displays “Activation failed” .
After doing a hard reset and before Hot Synchronization I have had 2 local Verizon technicians try to manually program the phone but they could not get it to accept programming.

Is there anything I should try before crying, cussing, and shopping for a new phone?

Probably not. But....



If your phone is showing "Initial programming needed" *228 will not work. *228 assumes that the handset has the HSID, Primary Channels and Secondary Channels set to point it to the location for the additional programming data. The way around this is to specify the carrier slot index with *2280x, where x=2 to 7. The slot for any given carrier can be different from market to market, so my telling you what Verizon is here has only a 1 in 6 chance of being the same there.

If you do not know the carrier slot number, you can simply try them in sequence and see what happens. (ie: *22802, *22803, ... *22807). It will only program on the correct slot index, and will return "Activation Failed" on incorrect slots. So, it will not hurt anything to try.

The significance of that depends on the capabilities of the techs. Unfortunately, my experience with in-store techs indicates that most are idiots. Try the OTA activation by slot. As you have already determined, it will take you about a minute per slot - so, less than 10 minutes to find out. The correct slot should finish in under 30 seconds.

Good luck

If you're in Liberty, TX (Liberty County), the correct OTASP activation code is *22801 (cellular B-block). If that doesn't work your phone is probably defective.

Thanks for the information guy’s, the phone still will not program so I will have to look for other options.