Unknown data usage early morning

@magreen17

Agree with you. The work order for my problem on both phones on our account was issued and over the course of a couple of days, I was contacted by the service rep. who was handling the problem. Yes, the work order was completed and my problem went away. I still see occasional 50 - 100kb "phone" data charges but because neither my wife or I get anywhere close to our 200mb limit, I've quit worrying about it. On the other hand, after reading a few of the updates here I've considered going into my AT&T account and reviewing data usage again. I think I will go to MediaNet/Internet and copy and paste the data into Text Editor and print the page. Next step is to go to the section showing my text messages and doing the same thing. That way I will have a side by side comparison to work with and eliminate the data charges that match up time wise. Anything that doesn't match up will then be "maintenance bandwidth" and give me reason to get back on the phone with AT&T. Being 68 and long since retired, you can bet I am NOT up in the wee hours of the morning texting anyone!!

I suspect that because the work order that was issued on my behalf (and the paper I had all the names and work order number written on is long since gone) it was treated as if it was only for my account rather than making it a "global" change. Anyone have the time to get with Apple Customer Service and ask for second level help? The name to ask for is Rasheed. If you get to him, relate my story from my earlier entry and ask him to get in touch with "James" at AT&T again. I know it is a long shot but worth attempting since the dates of my entries should get them close.

By the way, if you were to turn the phone off at night, power it down, the early morning data dumps will not occur. I suspect, though, that they will be made up once it is turned back on.

Good luck, will keep watching this.

AT&T does contribute to some of the problems but not the phantom data part. Every networking device has overhead, there is just nothing they can do to fix that. These devices will randomly send out broadcast messages but I think the problem is that AT&T will round them up to 1K even if each of these message is less. When packets get lost they will be retransmitted and this will also cause overhead. That second part is actually how the Internet protocol is designed for years, AT&T is not the authority to fix that.

The biggest problem is confusion.
1. AT&T does not record the actual usage at the time you use data. It will wait until that data session is over then report it as one sum. This normally happen when the user shut the phone down (closing the browser) after 1 week of use. If they do that at night, the bill will report that sum at night.
2. AT&T reports incoming and outgoing data as just Data. There is no way to tell if they are incoming or outgoing. My online account shows them all as Sent.

I believe they should (i dont know how) make it so that the bill correctly reflects outgoing and incoming data. They also need to stop reporting the data usage as one lump sum. But that will cause a very very long bill of thousand of pages. I think they should have the user agree that they will not get a paper bill if they want the data plan

Despite common beliefs, AT&T cannot tell which feature is generating traffic.

Message was edited by: VinUnleaded

Hallo people! You are not alone. And the problem is not (only) caused by mobile operator.

I am from Russia. Me (IPhone 4) and my wife (IPhone 3GS) have the same problems as you. We have latest iOS 4. Fortunately, there is no so much traffic, but it is. But we have not unlimited plans, so the traffic and money losing is noticeable. I have no mail accounts, I have turned PUSH off, Find my phone off, turned NOTICES off, all updates are manual, no programs running. But... In the same periods, shedulled, for example:

05.01.2011 0:35:56 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 62Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 1:36:02 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 60Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 2:36:08 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 64Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 3:36:13 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 48Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 4:36:19 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 42Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 5:36:24 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 42Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 6:36:30 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 35Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 7:36:35 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 43Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 8:36:40 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 42Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 9:36:45 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 36Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 10:36:51 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 42Kb 0,6910
05.01.2011 11:36:57 +03:00 internet.mts.ru gprs 42Kb 0,691

or

20.01.2011 23:24:44 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 51Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 0:24:49 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 36Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 1:24:54 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 43Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 2:24:59 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 42Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 3:25:04 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 29Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 4:25:09 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 42Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 5:25:14 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 37Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 6:25:20 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 42Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 7:25:25 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 42Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 8:25:30 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 43Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 9:25:35 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 37Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 10:25:41 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 43Kb 0,6910
21.01.2011 10:35:06 +03:00 internet.mts.ru HSDPA(3G) 14Kb 0,6910

I also have Wi-fi at home, and phone does not use it, it uses 3G This is terrible! In present time I have no solution for this problem except to turn off the "Cellular data transfer", so I have no mobile internet:-( But also no traffic.

I think this is only Apple bug, or not a bug, but special option...

mamushka!

Dance!!

Maybe iMap issue too?

http://www.withinwindows.com/2011/02/02/yahoo-your-buggy-imap-server-affects-iph one-too-thanks-for-playing-though/

(Pay attention to the replies on this post above)

After you seek out the solution, you too will be dancing the Mamushka!

It's mamochka, not mamushka... Anyway, just wanted to confirm that issue still exists in 4.2.1. My wife's phone just consumed 200M in one seat while idling in her jacket. Go figure... It seems to me it's either facebook or mail apps are culprits. Already disabled push for mail. We'll see how it goes from there.

i've got to say i'm not buying this 'they add up your usage later' or whatever that some in this thread are claiming. i started turning off my cellular data in the evening and i have not had the issue anymore. they don't scoop it up after i turn on 3g in the morning. my phone has no email on it and only a few apps of which i was always turning location services for those off unless i needed them, but i had it set the same way when i was getting the phantom data usage.

New Verizon iPhone user here... joining this thread late but I'm glad I found it. I've had my phone for 2 days now and when I checked my Verizon account this morning it shows that I racked up 277MB worth of data usage at 5:40 am yesterday when I was still asleep. The weird thing is that I didn't have my line activated until almost 3 hours later at 8:30 am because I used my husband's upgrade and wasn't able to switch it online. We have wi-fi at home and I'm not a heavy data user, so this large data charge was a big surprise. Luckily, I'm on the unlimited data plan, but still...

I haven't had a chance to read through all of the posts yet, but I plan to later tonight. It sounds like I'm going to have to turn off my 3G at night and any notifications... hopefully that will help. This is my first smartphone, so I'm just learning about this issue.

OMG, 4 or 8 GB?! I shouldn't complain about my 277 MB (I think it's close to .5 GB under the Settings on the iPhone). Hope turning off 3G and notifications will help with your phantom usage.

Prior to upgrading to the iPhone, I had the 25MB/month plan and never exceeded it.

Welcome to the club and the seemingly long and painful road ahead.

Updates to complaints coming soon.

This comment is vexing: "Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. _*We have only recently learned of the complaint*__, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."

I just checked my text messaging usage and the following came up, my iPhone is connected to wifi about 90% of the time, at work and at home so there is no way I have used this data:

Could anyone tell me how much data is 342646KB?

02/01 11:26 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 342646KB

02/09 02:10 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 25613KB
02/08 07:00 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 283306KB
02/08 06:30 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 49490KB
02/07 11:59 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 16225KB
02/07 12:50 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 26190KB
02/06 11:37 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2837KB
02/05 11:50 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 147685KB
02/04 10:35 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 30996KB
02/03 11:14 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 32586KB
02/03 04:16 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 10530KB
02/01 11:26 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 342646KB
01/31 10:26 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 766KB
01/30 04:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4891KB
01/29 09:51 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 64008KB
01/29 04:18 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 13781KB
01/29 12:57 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1523KB
01/28 10:59 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 13534KB
01/28 11:43 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 32947KB
01/27 11:28 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 25400KB
Total this page 1124954KB
TOTAL 1124954KB

Jeff, as I developer I can tell you that you definitely schedule tasks.

As I have said previously in this forum ( I know too many messages to go through), I find it completely unacceptable as an explanation that several 10,100s of megabytes are needed to reconcile billing!

it is impossible to need more information to account for none or very tiny amounts of transfers. Most people in here say that they did not cause any data transfers, so what is there to reconcile ????

That the problem manifests itself across carriers perhaps points to the third party involved in this. You know who I am talking about, I would rather not mention in here, so that my posting does not disappear as previous ones have. After all I always found it very surprising that the counts reported by the iPhone do not match the ones from ATT. This contradicts completely the "theory" of the ATT contacting the phone to consolidate billing information. If the phone cannot keep count why is ATT contacting it to consolidate billing? As a developer I know that if there is traffic from-to a device the device can absolutely, positively keep track of exact counts of the packets coming in/going out.

So nobody has explained, heck even attempted to explain why the counts are not in sync. just checked now, Dataman shown 0 usage , ATT 8.69MB. Some people say that their counts after updates have converged, i.e. the are very close. Given that other people have the same level of S/W on the iPhones as the users that had their counts "rectified", but are still experiencing problems, points to the fixed cases being a fluke.

"That the problem manifests itself across carriers perhaps points to the third party involved in this. You know who I am talking about, I would rather not mention in here, so that my posting does not disappear as previous ones have."

What you can't mention here-- mention to nemo dot omen at rock dot com

3rd Party keeps coming up but the carrier denies any culpability.

My 14-year-old son got an iPhone 4 late last month. He is now over 90% used of his 200 MB data plan. We have huge spikes that account for this usage.

Three of these spikes occurred at times that (I believe) he was turning on his phone - last two days right after school, and another right after going off shift at work.

I'm on phone with AT&T now trying to hunt this down.

Yeah, and also cancel your visual voicemail and mms service, since they won't work at these settings (3G and cell data off) anyway.

Oh, and if you only use it in airplane mode, they won't charge you for extra minutes either!

Seriously, it's not about not using the features for which we bought the device in the first place. It's about not being charged for something we didn't do. Turning everything off is NOT a solution.

Short-term solution is to disable Celluar data.

Long-term solution is to log bug with Apple. Since both ATT and Verizon have same issue, the source of the issue is probably something with the way the iPhone handles Celluar Data.