Unknown data usage early morning

When i said the values differ I should have specified that AT&T is higher. And I do use wifi. I would have thought that the usage meter on the iphone was for 3G data. Why would anyone care how much wifi data they were using.

I first got wind of this issue when I received a test msg from ATT noting I had used 65% of my data plan. Yikes, I'm 10 days into my billing cycle, and my usage behavior hasn't changes. I previously had the unlimited plan, but chose the 200mb option as my previous 6 month average was less than 60mb.

I spoke with ATT who in turn sent me to Apple. I spoke with Apple, and the first person (Chris) reviewed my issue and send me up the chain to a second level tech support person (Charles). I have provided the Apple folks with my data, and hope to hear back next week.

I will post any news from the Apple team.

Note: I also have an ATT 3G Microcell, but the Apple rep noted that my WiFi should be prioritized over the MicroCell for data. In the end I've had the Microcell for two months, and the crazy data usage (133mb) in two days is a new wrinkle.

Dan in Vermont

Please report back. This thread is over 22 pages and still everyone is looking into this. There will come a day when everyone who works at ATT and Apple will have to say they have been asked about this, if they are being honest.

vt_native wrote:
I first got wind of this issue when I received a test msg from ATT noting I had used 65% of my data plan. Yikes, I'm 10 days into my billing cycle, and my usage behavior hasn't changes. I previously had the unlimited plan, but chose the 200mb option as my previous 6 month average was less than 60mb.

I spoke with ATT who in turn sent me to Apple. I spoke with Apple, and the first person (Chris) reviewed my issue and send me up the chain to a second level tech support person (Charles). I have provided the Apple folks with my data, and hope to hear back next week.

I will post any news from the Apple team.

Note: I also have an ATT 3G Microcell, but the Apple rep noted that my WiFi should be prioritized over the MicroCell for data. In the end I've had the Microcell for two months, and the crazy data usage (133mb) in two days is a new wrinkle.

Dan in Vermont

My experience is exactly like yours, looked at my usage, picked a plan and now there are bursts of unknown data and I am going over. I just wish I remember if it happened before the iOS 4.0 update.

Edmund Pirali wrote:
My experience is exactly like yours, looked at my usage, picked a plan and now there are bursts of unknown data and I am going over. I just wish I remember if it happened before the iOS 4.0 update.

You don't have to remember. Log on to your AT&T account and look at your data usage. You can view it up to a year in the past. It will even produce a bar graph of your usage month by month. I did and found little change in usage month to month for at least a year.

I'm adding one more data point... we've left on a trip and we're using 3 different phones. Two of them are iphone OS 4 and one is iOS 3.1.2 (or whatever the latest 3 version is).

I started out using my iphone 4 to navigate. I then switched to my wife's iphone 3gs with 3.1.2 on it. I used it to navigate much of the day. We also used my daughter's iPhone 3g and she ended up downloading a couple of apps so her usage is moot.

My usage on iOS 4 - iphone 4 was 9.6mb for the day according to the ATT site
My wife's 3.1.2 usage was 1.6mb - and i used her phone MORE for navigation than my iOS 4 phone.

I'm betting that it has something to do iOS 4 based on today's experience.

Will be watching usage with both phones over the next couple of days - we're in a non-3g area tho so everything is Edge.

Sorry about the poor grammar in the first post, but I really wanted to get the info on the wire.

Here's a follow-up with corrections and additional data.

I first got wind of this issue when I received a txt msg from ATT noting I had used 65% of my data plan. Yikes, I was 10 days into my billing cycle, and my usage behavior hasn't changed, but I've already used 133M.

I previously had the unlimited plan, but after reading about the new tiered plan, I reviewed my usage on the ATT site, and chose the 200mb option. Reviewing my information from the previous 6 months (Feb-Jul 2010) showed data usage: 53, 30, 41, 63, 58, 53 Mbytes. I made the switch to the 200Mb plan prior to receiving my iPhone 4, but other members of the family still use the iPhone 3G, and the data usage is as expected (less than my values from above).

I spoke with ATT who in turn sent me to Apple. I spoke with Apple, and the first person (Chris) reviewed my issue and send me up the chain to a second level tech support person (Charles). I have provided the Apple folks with my data, and hope to hear back next week.

Note: I also have an ATT 3G Microcell, but the Apple rep noted that my WiFi should be prioritized over the MicroCell for data. In the end I've had the Microcell for two months, and the crazy data usage (133mb) in ten days is a new wrinkle. I see experiments in my future. I have plans to disable Cellular Data to ensure I don't burn data via 3G, but only WiFi.

Other iPhones in the home use IOS 4.0, and the Microcell too. Their usage looks fine. The big data use seems tied to my iPhone 4.

I will post any news from Apple, etc. This is way too stressful. Phew!

Dan in Vermont

Have any of you having this problem tried my fix, detailed below?

I believe I have a fix for the large transfers. Hook up your iPhone, in iTunes CTRL click on your device on the left, and reset warnings. Unhook and hook the phone up again, and confirm that you do not want Apple getting info.

That fixed it for me. There are very small transfers happening now in the middle of the night, on the order of 20K or so.

Nathan, I tried your fix, I opted out of sending Apple info for both my iPhone4 and my son's 3Gs.
Still getting rogue unexplained data usage in the middle of the night ranging from 9KB to 467KB!
Just last night alone there were 6 different transfers on my son's phone: 130KB / 76KB / 151KB / 354KB/ 9KB/ 467KB and 4 similar transfers on my phone ranging from 9KB to 366KB starting at 12:13am and going to 6:49am

We both are in a WI-FI wired environment all night, and neither of us are actively using the phone at the hours in question

Has anyone received any satisfaction from either APPLE or AT&T about this?

Oh, I forgot to mention when I called AT&T about this they verified that the time stamps are REAL TIME usage and not aggregate usage.... The guy was less than helpful with the issue though suggesting "maybe your son is viewing sites he doesn't want you to know about during the night..."
disgraceful!

Nathan Goldshlag wrote:
Have any of you having this problem tried my fix, detailed below?

I believe I have a fix for the large transfers. Hook up your iPhone, in iTunes CTRL click on your device on the left, and reset warnings. Unhook and hook the phone up again, and confirm that you do not want Apple getting info.

That fixed it for me. There are very small transfers happening now in the middle of the night, on the order of 20K or so.

I tried your fix when you first posted it, but it hasn't made any difference in the amount of data transferred.

Wow! I'm exhausted reading this thread. I only made it to page 17 or so and it started just rambling with SSDD.

So, I have been traveling internationally since March 30 and I have 50mb int'l data plan. I kept a close eye on my usage in Settings<General<usage the whole time and went over by a MB or two once or twice. I haven't used my phone for email, have always had Push turned off. Even when I do send an email, I really get very little email, and I don't text.

So I'm in Paris right now and yesterday morning got three texts and three emails (on my laptop) within 30 minutes that my Data had been cut off due to excessive usage and to call to make payment.

So I immediately try to log on to my account and see what's up and their "system is down" and then I call and their "system is down" and they can't help me. The guy says he'll call me when it's back up and he never does (AT&T). I was livid.

I finally was able access my account much later and to my horror see that my bill of a few days ago is for almost $900 with $600+ in excess data!! I called them and the guy was really helpful and I made the point to look at my data history, both across all time, but also just the last 3 months bills that show my travel, and the culprit hits on July 16:

07/16/2010 4:31PM Data Transfer 14,529 KB
07/16/2010 5:21PM Data Transfer 44 KB
07/16/2010 5:31PM Data Transfer 108,719 KB

I don't know if those times are my home time zone (Hawaii) or Europe.

Up until then I have never had a DT of more than about 2 MB, so obviously something is seriously bizarre. And check out the time stamps!! Coincidence that they're at 21 and 31 exactly? I think not!!

He could see that and I explained how I watched my Usage conscientiously and it never showed more than 51 or so MB in a month on the last day of my bill cycle, and for example, currently it shows 27MB out and 7 MB in for a total of 34 MB but he was showing on their end over 400 MB!!!

So it was easy for him to see that there is something very wrong and he said that "we've heard of this problem" and he said it's the phone and that I need to take it to the Apple Store ASAP.

So I get back into the US on Tuesday and have already scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar for Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile he did take all that data off my bill for both last month and for this and we agreed that they would leave Data blocked until I get back to the US on Tuesday night to stop the bleeding. Once I'm back I have unlimited data so I just have to call to turn it back on.

So there is definitely something very fishy here and I will report back Wednesday what the Genius Bar says.

Meanwhile I can tell you that I barely use Safari and yes I leave windows open in it but they are pretty much the same private sites all the time (my own for business that do not reload automatically) and I close the ones I was temporarily visiting such as Trip Advisor, and there is no explanation for what would have changed with my usage patterns 10 days ago. I have not installed any new apps, nor changed my usage habits at all. This is definitely something going on with Apple/the iPhone and AT&T.

unsungsong wrote:
We both are in a WI-FI wired environment all night, and neither of us are actively using the phone at the hours in question

That doesn't matter. WiFi is off (to save battery) when the phone is asleep. All data must go via the cellular network.

Has anyone received any satisfaction from either APPLE or AT&T about this?

No. Nor a consistent explanation.

Oh, I forgot to mention when I called AT&T about this they verified that the time stamps are REAL TIME usage and not aggregate usage.... The guy was less than helpful with the issue though suggesting "maybe your son is viewing sites he doesn't want you to know about during the night..."

I believe it is aggregate, because I had an original iPhone and I would get dozens of lines a day on my bill. There was even a news story from someone who got a 1,000 page bill listing every data transfer. So I'm sure they fixed that by doing summary reporting.

disgraceful!

Agreed

Cory Bauer wrote:
4. This thread was started June 5th, when people started noticing unclaimed data usage on their iPhones; AT&T introduced their capped data plans on June 2nd. How convenient. How even more convenient that AT&T's most common "solution" to customers is upgrade to a more expensive data plan.

Yes, that's when people started noticing, but that was because there had been no reason to pay attention to data usage before that. I logged on to my AT&T Account Online and reviewed data usage for the previous 12 months. There was no change after June 2; my usage has always been pretty consistent from month to month and usage since June 2 has not been any different.

5. A number of people noticed unexplainable data spikes earlier than June — around April. I have a theory that this may have been when Apple started collecting user data for iAd placement, and that may be what all of this unexplained usage is about. If this is the case, I expect they are only collecting data from users with push notifications enabled, because they're less likely to notice the extra usage and it conveniently masks the data collection (i.e., disabling push stops the mysterious usage so it must be all of those emails I never get at night).

I didn't notice this in my 12 month review.

6. Or, it's just a push notification glitch stuck in a loop, coupled with shoddy send/receive code that makes 40kb bloat to 3MB 😝

That's a real possibility. There IS a problem with Push notifications that causes dramatically reduced battery life. So if you have high usage AND reduced battery life it's worth trying this fix: Delete the Push account, reboot the phone, and add the account back. This forces all of the stale open connections that consume power but do not transfer content to go away.

It's also likely that iOS 4 increases data usage for a couple of reasons. First, apps can now download data in backup. If you have News apps like the NY Times or AP News, with earlier versions they only updated when you opened them; now they can download updates in background. There are settings in the NY Times app to control this. Another is the Maps app will not track you after you close the app. This is a feature so it doesn't have to reacquire you when you open it again if you are using it for navigation. But the Maps app uses a huge amount of data. When I was in Scotland it used 10 MB in 5 minutes as I walked around Edinburgh.

Nathan Goldshlag wrote:
Have any of you having this problem tried my fix, detailed below?

I believe I have a fix for the large transfers. Hook up your iPhone, in iTunes CTRL click on your device on the left, and reset warnings. Unhook and hook the phone up again, and confirm that you do not want Apple getting info.

That fixed it for me. There are very small transfers happening now in the middle of the night, on the order of 20K or so.

I tried the fix (both opting out of iads and resetting warnings and not sending data to Apple). and I am still getting large transfers while phone is in standby.

Nathan,

Sorry, I did mean to include a comment about your suggestion. Yesterday I performed the following.

1) Restored iPhone to Factory Settings due to Frozen iPhone issue. Would not wake from sleep with power/sleep button.
2) I disabled Apple from gathering diag information via your iTunes tidbit.
3) I hit the http://oo.apple.com and opted out for advertising.
4) I disabled Cellular Data in my setting to limit any transfers to WiFi. I was especially concerned about this as I have an ATT MicroCell and several folks have suggested an iPhone in sleep will default to 3G data even when there is WiFi available.

I plan to examine my detailed data usage on ATT's site as soon as today's usage shows up. I am especially interested in the wee hours of the AM type transfers.

Depending on the results, I have thoughts for an experiment with PUSH in the queue.

More to follow.

Dan in VT