I'm having the same issue with the iPhone 11. It couldn't connect to the cell data.. when I went to "Mobile Data", there were not setting options available and it said to update your iOS version. I was not able to update it as it kept getting stuck in "Verifying Update" after downloading the file. Decided to do a hard reset and thought it might help. Unfortunately, it made it worst! After resetting, I experienced the same issue that's shared here...unable to activate the phone... I tried using both the wifi and connecting to Mac methods. Finally, I did a "restore and update" in the Finder...managed to update it to iOS17...but it's still stuck at the "Unable to Activate" stage.