Unknown data usage early morning

It is "something else" the volume of data is too large to just be a usage summary. And it seems a some posters keep trying to steer the topic away from the quantity of data which is or should be the big concern. No way you need a 3-5 meg upload to say you used 3-5 megs of data.

David Pogue a NY Times tech blogger has weighed in. Having spent a bit more than a week watching my phone use and checking my logs at AT&T I'm convinced this is indeed the correct answer. Why all the mystery? Why no direct answer from AT&T? Come on guys, who are we dealing with here? If I were to make a movie about the cellular industry I'd call it *The Gang Who Couldn't Dial Straight*

I agree Eniblick. Until I know a definitive answer from either ATT and Apple, like I said in a earlier post I will be waiting on my purchase of this Iphone. Granted if ATT still had unlimited data plans available I would have no reason to worry.

This topic is not about the charges. That is secondary. This is about the huge amounts of data being uploaded to an unknown location by an unknown source and teh service provider (in this case AT&T) does not know who is doing the sending or reeceiving. That is VERY odd.

Hey everyone -

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Just thought I'd add my experience here. Like many of you, I started really checking and scrutinizing my data usage after the new 200 MB plans came out......and much to my surprise i discovered what everyone else here has. The Mysterious 1-2AM phone call with a huge upload showing.

Like most I use mostly Wifi at home, but i didn't realize until this thread that when I lock my phone at night, the Wifi turns off and it switches to AT&T.

For my situation it is about 5 to 9 MB every night at 1:55 to 1:58 AM. As far as I can really tell it is loosely based on my 3G/Edge usage. The days I watch a couple Vids on Youtube, it will go as high as 40 or 50 MB.

But the days I don't it is still 5 to 9 MB. All i really use it for is checking my email, checking stock prices and occasional web-surfing. I regularly have at least 4 or 5 web windows up within Safari, never closing them down.

Based on inputs in this thread I did several things. I switched one of my email accts that was push enabled from Push to 'fetch every 30 minutes', and closed down all Safari windows, leaving none up to refresh.

I didn't do this all at once. The first I did only the "Safari Window Shutdown". This had a huge impact. I still had a 1:55 AM upload but now it was only 950kb instead of the usual 5MB.

After seeing this, I turned off the push on my email, and set them all to Fetch manually every 30 minutes. I did zero Safari browsing over the past 2 days as well. I set the phone to never autolock, and overnight, thanks to a great suggestion on here, set the phone to the Camera Roll and selected a nearly dark picture, and turned the brightness down. 3G would not get in the way!

Lo and behold, the mysterious 2 AM upload went away! And when I used my phone in the morning there was no "catch up" upload. And it has been replaced for the last 2 days by data uploads every 30 minutes when my phone is awake (not auto-locked), that average about 30 KB or so. I have confirmed this to be the times my email was auto-fetching and I was not on my Wifi or conversely, when the phone had just woken up and hadnt found Wifi yet, but i stupidly refreshed my email inbox.

There's a bit more experimenting to do on my part, but to sum up:


1) All Safari Windows closed = much smaller (but still existent) 2 AM upload for me

2) Turning off Push and forcing Wifi all night = no 2 AM upload and even smaller aggregrate uploads throughout the day.

3) Have gone from 5 to 8 MB uploads at 2AM, down to 300 to 500 KB data usage showing up as line items instead of a batch.

Next I will not force Wifi overnight, and see if the 2AM upload shows back up. Then I will force Wifi and enable Push, and note those results as well.



Scott

Well in my case - the source was appparently Safari. I routinely leave many pages up, without surfing the web for days on the Iphone.

Closing all my Safari Windows resulting in a 5 MB day (no Safari browsing actually done) going to a 960KB day (no Safari browsing actually done).

I was not aware pages were uploaded to the web. I thought they were downloaded from a server. So while browsing the web how many megs of data did you upload from your open pages? And where did you upload them to?

I guess the relevance was supposed to be that the 2am time is not necessarily when the data transfer happens, just when it is reported. My own phone does not have multi-megabyte transfers every morning. I do have some Safari pages open, but I don't use push at all.

Message was edited by: Gerald Edgar

{quote:title=sbuck143 wrote:}
I set the phone to never autolock, and overnight, thanks to a great suggestion on here, set the phone to the Camera Roll and selected a nearly dark picture, and turned the brightness down. 3G would not get in the way!

{quote}

I've been following this thread for a while, and never came across this obscure Camera Roll technique. So, aside from being a lot of work each night to combat this issue, you are leaving your screen on all night? Over time this can't be good for your screen, even with the brightness turned down.

But more importantly... Blocking this access is not answering the question of what the data is and where it is going. If it is accounting and/or catch-up, why is it not actually reflective of my controlled usage over several days? And changing settings every night and morning is just not my idea of how I want to start and end my day.

I also saw this issue in April and May. I was seeing between 8-40MB per day showing up somewhere around the 2 AM timeframe.

Adding up all of that data usage showed my total data for May period as 400+MB. When my AT&T bill came, and when I go to the past months usage ammounts now in the June period, I see the May usage was only 93MB (which is basically what it should have been without those 8-40MB transfers).

So regardless of what they are, I am not getting charged. At least in my case, it seems that the AT&T response on Pogue's blog entry was true for me. The data was listed for some reason (accounting maybe) but I was was not charged for it.

Still quite strange.

Okay, more results:

Not forcing Wifi overnight (i.e. using 3G autolocked when i am asleep) combined with no safari windows up = no 2 AM mega upload report, and instead I see on my data report a regular every 30 minute, 30 KB reported, which corresponds exactly to my fetch mail schedule.

Push still disabled for the one email account.

So Wifi or 3G at night is a non-player. As long as Safari windows are closed, and Push disabled, there is no 2 AM upload reported.


Maybe I have not been clear previously, but I believe that nothing is actually being uploaded at 2 AM, that is just when the "report" is logged on the AT&T servers for an aggregate measure of activity for the day and just because the report says "sent" doesn't mean anything (in my estimation). My actual upload data as reported by my phone is 11 MB up for the cycle and 63 MB down. These "sent" 2 AM transfers total approximately 50MB for me over the cycle. I'll do a more detailed analysis when I have the time.

But PUSH and /or Safari windows appear to be the culprit. I would bet with Safari windows it's a deal where an ad autorefreshing on a page is trickling bandwidth throughout the day, depending on how often a page autorefreshes.

And one other thing my data usage report from ATT shows nothing in the "received" category except for txt messages. Anything and everything that comes from "Internet/Medianet" shows up with the category 'sent'.

So the idea that these 2 AM transfers are uploads based on AT&T using the word 'sent' in the report is incorrect.

Ok, i am going to chime in on this as i have an Unlocked (not jailbroken, just unlocked) iPhone 3Gs on T-Mobile. Now since the billing system is not the same, we should all see different results, right?

Well i have noticed looking at my data usage, the data sessions during the day do show accordingly, and at night i do see small data transfers anywhere from ~20k-30mb. Now, i do get junk mail and push notifications to the phone, so that's a definite possibility, so tonight after reading over this thread i'll try just resetting the phone (to close all safari windows) and disable push and see what it does.

This will give a little more insight into if it's the billing system, or the phone.

I haven't changed my data plan yet.

According to the quote in the David Pogue article:

“What your readers are seeing is a routine update of the daily data activity on their devices — whether the iPhone or other handsets — to ensure billing accuracy. Customers are not charged for any data usage as part of this routine update.”


How would we ever judge our data usage to assess changing our plan when it is all reported together. But not to be charged?

I have the same issue. I contacted Wisconsin Department of Ag Trade and Consumer protection to get it on record and sent them a link to this discussion.

The phone tech at AT&T told me to just turn my phone off at night. Not.