i3 with 3G in North America

[EvanstonI3]

That's the thread! And that is what appears to have happened, based on tezarc's telling of it.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17401&start=70

No, that is not true. His last post shows that "something" changed during February but the car still has basic Connected Services, he just lost RTT (Real Time Traffic). The confusing part of his last post was where he was trying to access "BMW CONNECTED STORE" via iDrive and it stated "not available for this car".

I replied that my 2017 has said that since I bought it in Oct 2020. Whatever the "BMW CONNECTED DRIVE STORE" was via iDrive has been deprecated for all earlier models for whatever reason. It has nothing to do with 3G.

There have been zero posts by Tezarc since then for clarification. I would like to know the status as well but it seems his replacement 4G TCU is "working" for basic Connected Services as mine is.

[eNate]

Oh! I'll need to read through it again (long thread!) but I apparently came away with the wrong impression of what happened.

[Barvelh]

Thank you all for your recommendations and research.

I have some time next month to concentrate on this and think that finding a 2017 Telemetics box would be the best move.

Not sure who should install it. But going to search the local yards here in Cali and E-Bay.

There are some great threads here and hope to check in with the poster for an update.

[tezarc]

Used TCU will not work. Only new, never registered TCUs will work, and only dealerships have access to ISTA+.