Unknown data usage early morning

Hello All...

I have not read every response but I have filtered thru some of this thread and wanted to post my thoughts after also talking with AT&T about my daughters data usage bill. There can be a FIX if APPLE & AT&T choose to work on it.

Same thing occurs... at night when her phone is idle in sleep mode, saving battery life the phone goes off our network and on to 3G and that is when the phone sends lots of data 26,000 KB or more at 11pm, 1am 3am when we know she is not using her phone. This is a BUG and both APPLE AND AT&T need to be working together to make a solution.

After talking with AT&T Technical Support top level they hopfully are taking my suggestion and recommending it to APPLE DEVELOPERS... of if the phone is in sleep mode to wake and check if on "HOME NETWORK or PRIMARY NETWORK" and send data thru that mechanism first, otherwise use 3G. This would solve the at night when phone is idle (data overages) and not interfere with 3G service for phones when users are out at 1am still want to data usage when not on their network.

I hope APPLE DEVELOPERS have someone reading this thread and will take this recommendation to heart, you develop a cool phone but if the data charges are the price of a monthly car payment then the solution is priced out of majority of users ability. Especially when you can code it to prevent unessessary data transfers over AT&T services verses our home network or primary network.

APPLE DEVELOPERS please work on this fix!!!!!!!

Apple developers do not read the forums, and even if they did the couldn't do anything because they just develop what is in the specs they are give; and Apple in general does not read threads except to collect statistics on reported issues and to moderate where needed. But the mods are not technical.

While you focus on AT&T, note that data usage higher than expected has been reported around the world, not just in the US.

Have you tried leaving the phone plugged in overnight, which should keep WiFi on?

Have you gone to System/Notifications and turned off unnecessary System Services?

Does your daughter have the Facebook app? If so this probably accounts for most of the data. Try disabling Notifications for it and see what happens.

Lawrence,

As my earlier posts indicated, I did all the things you mention in your questions above, but it doesn't work. (This was after having read through the discussion board pretty thoroughly to try anything to get the data problem ot stop.) I had my phone plugged in every night within reach of my wifi (just in the next room), extraneous services and notifications off, etc. And I still had data coming through the entire night, as Dataman indicated. Having your phone plugged in does nothing for this problem, unfortunately, and the issue had a sudden onset after months of NOT having that level of data coming through. It also didn't coincide with any software updates. The only thing that has made the problem less of an issue was (1) wiping the phone and restoring from my computer and (2) turning off cellular data overnight. (Even though I restored the phone and basically put all settings to manually get mail and other basic functions, I still had a steady flow of data, albeit much less, all night.)

My daughter is 12 and not on Facebook and does not have the app so its not that and we all have ihomes and are charging every night and the phone still goes off our network and into the 3G at night. She does not have notifcations turned on so this also is not the issue. We believe iTunes is the culprit in the data as it may be syncing with iCloud because that is the only item where she is adding movies or songs and apps updated.

Besides AT&T Technical Support highest level I have also reached out to APPLE but it helps if the community gets around the idea of the solution and promotes that and even though moderators read the thread, the more the idea gets out the better and you never know.... this might just get to a person at APPLE who can make a difference.

To not say anything would not help make APPLE products better, even if DEVELOPERS are not reading this thread. The concept suggested is a good concept to solve the date overages at night issue if APPLE will take this suggestion.

Hi! everyone,

I was searching for the next iOS update on wiki and saw the section of iOS 5 bugs, so I went ahead and added this issue there. Please check/modify here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#Major_software_bugs:_portable_i OS_devices

It seems the next update 5.1would come out soon, let's see what's gonna happen, but I doubt it would make any difference. But I figured maybe adding this to wiki could at least get some attensions from Apple or carrier.

Thank you for the link and your proactive approach to this long standing issue. I know for fact that companies do monitor customer blogs and discussion sites (even if it is anonymously or by proxy). It is to their benefit.

Well it just happened again to me also. Exessive Data being sent for no apparant reason.

I've had my iphone 4 for over a year and never went over my 200 Mb of Data except once when my son was in the hospital out of state and I used the phone alot but I expected that. In fact many months I would not even use a third of the 200 Mb data on my plan even though I check email and use the web occasionally. If I do use up my Data it is mostly Received Data and very little is Sent.

I am usually connected to Wifi and so only use 3G occasionally (or so I thought).

I zero the phones Cellular Data Usage Meter on my billing cycle Date and it always closely agrees with the ATT's record of Data used. Every so often I check it to see how much Data I have used. I went almost two weeks after my billing cylce rolled over and used about 20Mb of Data but I just checked it now and in the last couple days it Sent 130Mb out. Received Data was 30 Mb.

This is the 3rd month this has happened. For the first year using the phone I never had the problem.

It makes no sense that the phone would sent out this much Data for no apparent reason. I could understand if it was downloading and Receiving the Data but where in the world is it Sending all this Data. What is it Sending and to who is it sending it to?

It is really irritating that I have a couple weeks to go before my billing cycle rolls over and most of my Data is used up when I have hardly used 3G at all. Now I have to turn of Cellular Data or possibly go over my limit.

I'm glad I found this thread so at least I'm not the only person having this problem. Just wish there was a fix. I've tried the simple stuff mentioned but I doesn't help.

I have called ATT a couple times and also Apple but no help at all from them. After reading how many other users are having the problem I'll try calling again.

I thought i had solved the problem by closing notifications and my phone was back to its usual 5mB a day for 2 weeks. But then it jumped back up to 5mB every time i check my emails again. So it was up to about 60mB a day - this was half way through my charging month - same as last month. Is that a coincidence that it is happening half way through the month? I was hoping that the latest iPhone update would sort it but not sure yet.

brianx51 wrote:

as others have figured out, all you have to do is turn off Cellular Data before midnight, and leave it off all night

Yes, you won't see it at night, but the same number will appear when you turn cellular data back on in the morning. You've just delayed it, not prevented it. As has been reported many times in this thread.

not in our case here in eastern PA using ATT on WIFI at home. I'd be over my 200MB limit in mere days if i didn't turn it off but only use about half that when i turn off the Cellular Data faithfully.

i can't believe this is going unanswered with Apple even if it's not their direct doing.

Massive data transfers on AT&T -- not just at midnight

A number of people mentioned that turning cellular access off before midnight solved the problem. Not with our son's iPhone 4s. Here are two examples:

22-Feb 9:17 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 207705KB

22-Feb 8:42 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 14666KB

Note the first example -- a whopping 207 megabytes! This also occured while he was in the hospital, so there is no chance that this was 'operator error'.

An interesting update re AT&T: I called them and finally got through to a supervisor. The 'data usage' report on our client account page is now unavailable. Hopefully this means that they are going to delete all of these bogus charges.

Mark

This is happening to me as well. I have been charged twice, two months in a row, for going over my 200MB limit. When I barely used anything at all! I was told to turn everything possible to OFF. So I did that. My cellular data, 3G, WiFi... push notifications.. all of it... off. (it was already set to fetch manually, not automatically) But they STILL say I went over!!

I don't care WHAT company is updating or sending info. We shouldn't be charged for something we are not doing ourselves. The only data usage that should be showing up on our bills is the data we USE; the data we're aware that we're using. Not some random updates or whatever is happening that AT&T can't even answer! Which I think is crap, btw. This has been happening since 2010. They have to know what's going on by now.

I downloaded an app that tells me, in real time, the data being used. I'm at 2.7 MB in an hour and I haven't used a single thing but checking that specific app 4 times! I don't remember the last time I've checked my email on my phone. Not since they told me I went over the first time.

There's no way this should still be happenng. It has to be AT&T being greedy because they're playing dumb and we still don't know what the heck these high kb's are being transfered to/from our phones.

My update jumped up again 2 days ago but I discovered that one of my mail accounts was not responding. I suspended it and set up a new identical account that worked fine. Immediately I did that the data usage returned back to normal (more like 0.1mB every time I checked my account rather than 5mB). My data usage has now apparently returned to normal. This might act as a confirmation of earlier comments in this thread that the usage could be caused by a fault in repeated attempts at downloading data.

How much can I trust iphone's data usage?

My wife's phone used to showed unknown data usage and most of those occured when the phone supposed to on wifi. (or when and where wifi was available - like home).

Few days ago, my daughter's phone used 34MB of cell data. I realized that was downloading app from app store - Onavo also reported 34MB cell data was used app store downloading. On her phone, downloading from App store was set for WIFI only. How come this happening? I was with my daughter when she started downloading and it was on public WIFI - signal was not good so we paused and finished at home WIFI.

I am not certain that my iphone is really restricting cell data use when it was supposed to. (other than completly turn off)

Go to Settings-->General-->About. Scroll down to Diagnostics and Usage, pick that....then select Don't Send. This should stop your iphone from sending data back to Apple at weird times during the day (or night).