My 3GS unlocked ATT iphone wont active-help!

Question

Greetings, our family has been ont he ATT Family plan for years. Ive got the new iPhone5, wife has 4S and mom has 3GS. My OLD iphone 3GS, which was unlocked via ATT was given to my little girl to play apps and music on and was working great until a week ago. I did update it to iOS6 and she had been using it with my OLD/Dead sim card-again NOT using it as a phone but like a ipod. All of a sudden, its not stating its needs to be activated but will not. Ive tried updateing over the air AND via connected to iTunes. The phone itself says that the activation server is temporarily unavailable. I have tried for over a week and I get the same message on the phone. How can I get this working??
To re-state: it WAS my old phone, its now unlocked, updated to IOS6, old/dead sim card sim card. Had been working great for access to apps & music but now need activation but wont activate.

Answer 1

Not sure this is the right fix for you, because for me the iPod app would stay open, but not play music when selected. I read in another thread a solution that worked for me.
Basically, you need to delete the music from the phone and re-copy from iTunes with 2 syncs. In the music tab, uncheck the boxes in the playlist, artist and genre option, removing all music from the phone, then sync. Then, re-check the desired music to copy back to the phone and sync. Music should play now from the phone.
I echo the sentiment of another poster that iOS4 really is a disaster. Problem like this should have been solved before release.