Unknown data usage early morning

This happens to me too. I used to turn my phone off at night and then I was seeing data usage every morning around 7am; which is when I would turn the phone on. ATT initially blamed this on the fact that when I first turned the phone on, anything that was waiting to download or push to me from overnight was coming to me when the phone powered up and BEFORE it had a chance to establish my wifi connection. So, they told me to just leave the phone on overnight to avoid this. I did this and then I started seeing the 2am usage that everyone is talking about on this post (and still seeing even after upgrading to OS4). I informed ATT of this and here was their second response to me:

+*Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T regarding data still counting against your data plan when you are connected to your home hot spot. I apologize for any confusion that this issue may have caused. My name is Jenny Hardridge, and I am happy to help you with your inquiry.*+

+*After receiving your email and contacting you by phone today at 2:00 p.m. CST, we discussed why the data transfer is counting against your data plan when you at home and connected to your hot spot. As we discussed, if you chose Apple alerts during your initial iTunes activation, these alerts will periodically transfer data to your IPHONE 3GS. When this occurs, the IPHONE 3GS automatically defaults to 3G and your data transfer begins. The 3G connection will continue until the data transfer is complete and then the phone will find your Wi-Fi connection. We ask that you always check and make sure the Wi-Fi icon is on as confirmation that you are connected through Wi-Fi.*+

+*Data reverting back to 3G usually occurs when an alert is sent to a phone that is turned off. You can avoid this by leaving your phone on and just putting it on silent, this way the phone is already connected to Wi-Fi and the data would not go against your data plan. If kept on silent, please remember to power cycle your phone a couple of times a week for AT&T billing summary maintenance.*+

CyBeRino, I understand and agree with you about the timing of the usage being billed for whole sessions, and can understand that there is a minimum package charge with some carriers. But our phone usage does not under any circumstances add up to 150MB in a session. The other phone, with another carrier, used identically has used 7MB in 10 days. Most of what we do is on wifi.

But interestingly since I moved the rogue sim card from a 3GS to a 3G phone the 'alleged' usage has stopped. Unfortunately the 3G was also upgraded to OS4 so at this stage there are two variables and I'm not sure it's the OS or the phone that stopped the problem.

When we have a bit more leeway on our plan I'll move the sim card bag to the 3GS with OS4 and see if the problem returns.

Cirrus330 wrote:
CyBeRino, I understand and agree with you about the timing of the usage being billed for whole sessions, and can understand that there is a minimum package charge with some carriers. But our phone usage does not under any circumstances add up to 150MB in a session. The other phone, with another carrier, used identically has used 7MB in 10 days. Most of what we do is on wifi.

Obviously I have absolutely no way of telling you with certainty what the reason for your data transfer was. But I can tell you with certainty it was not an iOS update. As I said, those are well over 200MB.

I am also not disputing that there may be data usage you can't explain-- these phones run a multi-tasking, fully capable OS (though this is not exposed to the user as such) and it is unfortunately not easy to tell what is happening over the cellular data connection with things running in the background. The phone may be fetching e-mail, waiting for pushed data from the Push Notification Service or some other service, etc., without it being immediately apparent.

What I am disputing, is that there is some large amount of data being transferred nightly. This simply does not happen and in fact most of the amounts I've seen here are impossible to even transfer in such a short time span.

brm123 wrote:
A lot of people are still missing the big point. What is being UPLOADED? How would one verfiy it?

Forget that the bill says 'Sent', it's an unfortunate misnomer that I believe caused most of the confusion here. It means 'transferred', in either direction (to or from your phone.)

I've only had my iPhone for about 4 days now. I went with the 200mb plan, since I'm almost always on wifi. Anyway, within the first 3 days, I had almost hit my limit. (I got a lovely little text message alert at 5am that I was at 65% of my limit, and then about 10 seconds later, another one, saying that I was at 90% of my limit.) I immediately upgraded to the 2gig plan, so that I wouldn't go over. Then, I checked my data usage- Check this out:

06/29 03:51 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21678KB
06/29 12:35 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1540KB
06/29 11:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 58KB
06/29 02:23 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 522KB
06/28 04:41 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9349KB
06/28 11:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2248KB
06/28 02:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1909KB
06/28 12:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9KB
06/27 02:34 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 157138KB
06/26 11:34 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 24KB
06/26 10:39 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 10KB
06/26 10:21 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 73KB
06/26 10:07 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9KB
06/26 10:03 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 40KB
06/26 10:02 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8KB
06/26 09:58 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 99KB
Total this page 194714KB
TOTAL 194714KB

The 6/27 entry is especially disturbing- 157138KB at 2am?!?! The large transfer on the 29th is no ray of sunshine either.

The AT&T rep said he had no clue what it could be- and just suggested that I monitor it. (Gee, thanks- never would have thought of that.)

So if any of you guys have any clue how I could possibly have managed to amass such a ridiculous amount of data usage in 3 short days, please please throw me a bone.

Thanks!

well if my push is off, fetch is off, and so is notifications are off, why is it logging in and checking for something then? I could understand your logic if i had some sort of push on, but i dont and no open windows in Safari either.

Also, i really dont care about my data usage as T-Mobile is amazing when it comes to data usage and the lack of caring as i used over 10gb last month tethering with my plan (they have free tethering on Smartphone plans) and they dont even care..

I had the exact same thing happen. You know how AT&T made a stink about how 3G data on a microcell counts against your usage and that it shouldn't matter because you have WiFi... They forget the iPhone turns off wifi while locked thus falling back to 3G. Yesterday at 1:03AM I see 22KB post online for billing. Then at 4:19AM I see 104 MB post. That is IMPOSSIBLE. The sting of it all is if you're on a 200MB plan you're screwed by this over and over again. So what exactly was this phone doing while it was sitting on the knight stand charging. Btw the data went over my 3G microcell. This is the case in point as to why the Microcell data shouldn't count.

/b

My wife is having a similar issue. She is asleep by 9:00. This usage is extreme:

06/28 01:37 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 23KB
06/28 01:30 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8151KB
06/28 10:13 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2329857KB
06/28 08:00 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 31KB
06/27 11:36 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1283301KB
06/27 11:37 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 622KB
06/27 10:39 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 18KB

Similar usage has been on our last three bills. It's not every night, just once a month. There has to be a corrupted setting or app.

No.

You are sending data in small bits during the day. ATT keeps track of this through the day, and only reports an aggregated row summarizing the days usage on your bill, so that the bill is physically shorter. Nothing is being sent over the air at night -- ATT is just displaying usage spread out through the day AS IF it had been sent in one burst at night.

Spidey!!!

All internet access via ATT is billed as "Sent", regardless of whether you are uploading or downloading data.

Note that almost all internet communication is bidirectional -- requests are sent and responses received. Not to mention the underlying flow control handshaking and 3G session maintenance stuff. This makes applying a "Sent" or "Received" to an IP session a sort of difficult...

It is my belief, as I mentioned earlier, that this is an aggregation FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY of data which actually was transmitted/received earlier in the day.

Spidey!!!

Then why doesn't it appear if the phone is off at the time it is usually "sent", but appears when the phone is turned back on? If it is merely the billing system aggregating it and posting it at one time it should be able to do that whether the phone is off or on.

Well for anyone tethering... WATCH OUT!!

6 days into my bill cycle and I'm already at 750MB (771,520kB = 750MB (1028kB=1MB)


I'm still blown away that tethering is sucking up SO much data... not even streaming vid or anything... just mindless surfing... I guess I'll stop otherwise I'll paying the $10 overage per GB many times over... 😟

(what IS odd is that no data is showing as received... ALL my data is labeled as "SENT" so I have no way of knowing which data was U/L or D/L...

I might actually need to return my iP4 within the 30days... this data cap is BS when there's so much 'unaccounted for' and 'unexplained' data...

DATE TIME TO/FROM TYPE DIRECTION MSG/KB/MIN
07/07 10:58 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 47KB
07/07 02:21 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2789KB
07/06 06:54 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 30890KB
07/06 05:53 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 154KB
07/06 04:25 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 192KB
07/06 01:34 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 260KB
07/06 12:59 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 47KB
07/06 12:29 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 317KB
07/06 12:20 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 822KB
07/06 11:37 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 7985KB
07/06 09:55 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1696KB
07/06 08:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 65KB
07/06 02:00 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9000KB
07/05 02:36 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 62762KB
07/04 05:53 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4802KB
07/04 05:39 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 30KB
07/04 05:27 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 117KB
07/04 01:57 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 123514KB
07/03 10:16 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 160271KB
07/03 09:54 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 58411KB
07/03 03:56 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 35445KB
07/03 02:47 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 90791KB
07/02 10:45 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 110815KB
07/02 10:44 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 69KB
07/02 09:36 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1642KB
07/02 05:38 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2007KB
07/02 05:22 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 55KB
07/02 04:57 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 74KB
07/02 04:17 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 20KB
07/02 03:58 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 17KB
07/02 01:22 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 316KB
07/02 11:18 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 954KB
07/02 10:40 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 85KB
07/02 10:15 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21KB
07/02 02:54 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 30982KB
07/02 12:54 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 490KB
07/02 12:08 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 33566KB
Total this page 771520KB
TOTAL 771520KB

I just got the iphone 4 on 6/25. My data plan is 200Mb/month. After getting the phone I kept a close eye on my data so I wouldn't go over. Up until 7/3 I was well under (25Mb). I received an email from ATT on 7/5 saying I went over my 200Mb. I checked my bill and found that on 7/4 @ 1:26 am it sent 205Mb. This is over my monthly data. I called ATT and they didn't have an answer.



After I talked to ATT with no results I turned off Cellular Data on the iphone. It's been off since 7/5 (7/5-7/7). Today I noticed on my phone the data usage had increased by 30Mb. I don't understand how it can go up when I have the data off. I called ATT again and they said that that is the total data usage for the phone including wifi. It clearly says "Cellular Network Data". Since I checked this morning it has gone up 20Mb more. (all on wifi with data off) My fear is that I will turn on data and it will sync with att servers and increase my data by 50Mb and I haven't even been using 3G.



Someone from ATT and/or Apple needs to figure out what is going on because this is clearly a problem. No one seems to have an answer. This is going to be an issue with the new data plans. I only have the 200Mb/month but when it charges 205Mb at a shot it wouldn't matter if it was 2Gb, you will still go over.
.

When you look at 'previous data usage' on your bill you see a bar graph of the last 6 months or so. I looked at mine yesterday. I know my usage is consistent as I only use the phone on 3G at the same times each day. The graph for the last 3 months, since April shows much higher usage than the three months before that. This is just wrong!

So, after spending a month consciously monitoring my data usage, I watched my April-June spike drop back to the usage I had previously been seeing. Prior to April my usage was in the 150-200MB range, from April to June it was 315-350MB, yet my usage patterns were the same as they had always been.

I have all Push/Fetch turned off, and since switching to my iPhone 4 I now have the ability to turn off cellular data so I switched to the 200MB plan; I might regret this...

I still see the 2AM cellular transfers, but am planning on turning cellular data off and force them to wifi to cut the usage down.

ATT and Apple have still given no unified answer to this issue. I do think this needs to be investigated further, but in the meantime I'll be doing my data avoiding rituals to keep them from charging me for ghosts.