Unknown data usage early morning

Okay, but why does the data report disappear when you turn on Airplane mode, turn off notifications push and fetch, location services, etc.? I've done this for two days now and there is no longer a data report in the morning. If ATT was reporting data at the end of the day based on usage, it should have consistently keep doing that.

I talked to ATT again and they are saying it's definitely the apps and notifications. I have an ATT representative follow up with me to get to the bottom of this issue (because they don't know why it wouldn't go on WiFi and use the 3G instead during the middle of the night).

Also, none of the ATT employees have offered the data summation explanation at the end of the day. That would have been an easy explanation for them, but they are not offering this. They all say it's updates and apps. So again, this makes me belief the data report summation is not true. It's something else.

I have now made 3 calls to AT&T about this. The first time they said it was the "iPhone updating itself". They made me shut off the phone and said they would "reset" something so this wouldn't happen. Of course it did. Next, they told me it was the apps, but they had no idea why the apps couldn't transmit data via wifi instead of 3G. They transferred me to someone from Apple, who didn't know why I should be getting these data charges between 2 and 3 a.m. each day. They also couldn't explain the latest of the early morning entries, which was a whopping *96,000 KB* (or about half of the allotted monthly use under the cheapest plan). The Apple person did suggest that I uninstall and reinstall iTunes. Why? Who knows. Also, she said that I should have already updated to OS4 (which I understand is not available until 6/21). She said it was an "AT&T billing problem".

Bottom line: two giant, unresponsive organizations pointing fingers at each other, with little regard for the consumer.

So you are sennding data during the day (but not really. You are really sending all of the data you did not send duriing the day, at night and in an amount equal to what you did not send. So you are sending the same data twice???? Makes as much sense as your post.

Bottom line IT IS TOO MUCH data to summarize a usage total. It is being used for some other purpose.

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.

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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.