Q: Unknown data usage early morning

Here we go again. Someone else who apparently hasn't bothered to read through all of the posts and is simply repeating the AT&T party line about "accumulated tally at the end of the day". That line of BS has already been discredited in several posts in this topic.

Since I was hit with an extra $10.00 charge for going over my 2GB data plan limit in the first month, I have been keeping a detailed record of data usage on my iPhone. I reset the "Cellular Network Data" usage counter on my iPhone at the beginning of my new billing cycle so that it would start at zero along with the AT&T web site. I have been keeping a log of the date and time that I use data services and comparing it with the date and time that is reported on the AT&T web site. My usage during the day normally gets reported on the AT&T web site within a few hours of when it happened. And in most cases it corresponds very closely with what I would expect considering the type of data activity I performed. At night I make sure that there are no apps running or suspended in the background. I connect the iPhone to the charger and put it to sleep. Earlier in the month, it looked like the unexplained overnight charges had stopped but I soon realized that they were happening randomly during the day mixed in with my known usage. In the past week the unexplained overnight transfers have started back up again.

Furthermore, the total data use reported on the AT&T web site does not agree with what the "Cellular Network Data" usage that is recorded by the iPhone. So far in the three weeks that I have been keeping these detailed records my iPhone reports 22.7MB of data sent and 138MB of data received for a total of 160.7MB. AT&T's web site claims that I have used a total of 379.25MB. The difference being 218.55MB which roughly equals the total of all of the transfers that I cannot reconcile with my written log. And please don't trot out the old line about data usage possibly not being reported on the site for up to 48 hours. That would make the AT&T site report less usage than the iPhone, not more than twice as much! At one point I thought that what was going on was AT&T recording each individual data session during the day and then tallying them all up at the end of the day and adding the total back in, resulting in double billing. However, I am not positive at this point if that is what is going on because the resulting total on the AT&T site is more than double what is reported by the iPhone.

How can AT&T claim that 65% of their customers would qualify for the 200MB data plan when these unexplained data charges account for more than that with one week still left in the billing cycle? It would be interesting to see an independent audit of exactly how many AT&T customers actually do qualify for the 200MB plan and how many originally signed up for the 200MB plan but got charged extra or had to switch to the 2GB plan because of the unexplained data usage.

*I have tried to do the "reset warnings" that you mention but when I click it nothing happend no option to choose nothing what I am doing wrong please help!!!*
"Nathan Goldshlag wrote:
The need to create a new iTunes account is completely false. I stopped the large data transfers by hooking up the phone, right clicking on the phone device on the left, resetting warnings, and choosing not to send info to Apple. The large transfers went away.
I reset warnings and chose not to send info to Apple, but I still have data transfers between 2 & 3 AM, sometimes very large."

**** straight rentamark!!

D _ M N straigh rentamark. All the AT&T "explanations" ignorre the:

1) Size of the tranfers
2) Source of the transfers (from what app or ?)
3) Content of the transfers (what info does the data contain)
4) Destination of the transfers (who is requesting and receiving data destined for).

And what about the post that said AT&T was aware of this known issue???

Please help anyone. Just got back from a 2 week holiday in Spain and have been told my usage for the month stands at £10,500.00 ! But my data usage counter only shows I went 16mb over my bundle. I even rang Orange half way through the week to check my roaming balance and was told all was within my initial bundle. I took out an extra 20 MB to last the second week and constantly monitored the register and sent every time I used the phone. I checked and sent e-mails and checked maybe a dozen web pages such as weather etc. I certainly didn't down load movies or films as I was aware of rip off charges. I have been told the issue can't be resolved until my next billing date 12 September. I am now aware from this forum of the IPhone 4 multitasking issues and how many applications still keep running when you think there off but either way I constantly checked my data usage and even now only shows some 50 MB since the last reset so if the £10k usage was true why didn't I see it in my usage when I checked it after each use? Thank you for any thoughts you might have

Good, I am not the only one then. As mentioned in the whole discussion :

1. It uses randomly ranging from 3MB to 45MB.
2. It's only one line item in the data usage list, happens sometime in the night between 11pm to 5am, weird.
3. AT&T couldn't figure out what it was in the 40 minutes discussion I had with them.
4. This usage is coming to 1/2 of my 200MB allowed usage per month.

What I noticed is that :

1. When at home, iphone 4 uses my Wifi but when the phone sleeps it's using 3G network, don't know why.
2. To replicate the issue :
a. Lock or click the power button when on wifi network.
b. Wait for 5 minutes, then press the HOME key, immediately notice that it shows 3G and connects to wifi immediately.

Given this situation, does iPhone 4 use 3G network instead of wifi network when SLEEPING.

If you read a little before posting, you will see that this has been established. The phone uses the 3G network instead of WiFi when sleeping unless your phone is charging.

I have a jailbroken iPhone 4 and run an app called SBSCHEDULES. I have it set to turn virtually everything off (BT, GPS, WIFI, PHONE, LOCATION, DATA, 3G, EDGE) at 11:30PM and back on at 7AM. Now I am getting these large data SENDS (not receives) at 7AM instead of 2:33AM. All apps are disabled from the "multi-tasking" screen and the phone is in airplane mode. I can see a "RECEIVING" of data (emails from overnight) but not "SENDING" data when the phone comes back to life at 7AM.

Message was edited by: EdFNJ

Hey Mark:

I can tell you that you are not alone. That's exactly what happened to me. I roamed into Spain and then to France and in a 24 hour period AT&T showed and charged me for over 500 MB data when my phone showed 27mb and I DID NOT USE IT any differently than I had for the previous 3 months while traveling NZ, Australia, South Africa and other parts of Europe.

It's an issue with O2 in Spain. AT&T has credited my $2700+ of $3300 charges and I'm still arguing wtih them on the other $500.

Call International support rather than regular support. I've been dealing with Roberta, a supervisor and then Walter, someone above her. Int'l is based out of Washington DC and is a 916 number. Sorry I don't have it near me right now but you can find it on AT&T site, assuming you have AT&T.

A read of the thread would show that AT&T reports ALL data usage as "sent". And the observation that turning off data at night results in the large transfer when data is turned back on has been reported also. Glad you could confirm it.

Hi Bulla,
Thanks for that it's good to know it was sorted out. You would have thought they would let you off the whole amount for the hassle.
I went to Spain fully aware of hi data roaming costs so my bill for £10,500.00 didn't happen because i downloaded movies or You Tube clips without knowing. My argument is say **I chose to** leave data roaming on 24-7 .....Say I wanted to download large files.... As long as every time I used the phone I checked the MB received and sent under Mobile Network Data I would have seen the MB usage go up and could control my spending. I know from the Network data shown since the last reset that I was over my bundle by 16MB. That should cost me £48 max and yet Orange say I used £10,500.00 of data!
This is not a fault of the I Phone 4 it's the Spanish network sending my carrier the wrong information. I've tested my Mobile Network Data against other users phones since coming back to the UK and it's 95% accurate to their data usage.
I also spoke to Apple and Orange directly and was advised that without wifi access to check the actual carriers data logged for my phone they both recommended simply checking the phones data information is the way to track usage and avoid the shock bills. That's why the phone has that function.
It's the time and hassle and grief the customers have while they wait for these disputes to be resolved and we never hear of them giving suitable compensation when they do get it wrong.

I had a user whose iPhone 4 had excessive data usage between 2 AM and 5 AM, and in general when they were away from Wi-Fi.

In the Mail app I found an email with an attachment that had been stuck in the Mail app’s Outbox for weeks. I deleted the email after turning off data connections on 8/27.

The Mail app was constantly trying, unsuccessfully, to send the email, and was using up a lot of cellular data bandwidth at night when Wi-Fi was unavailable.

Once the email was deleted, the nighttime cellular data usage stopped almost completely. See the data usage log below.

I also downloaded an iPhone profile that is recommended to improve communication between iPhones with iOS 4 and Exchange servers. See http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3398

Tom

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Hi

After reading some posts we all know that the iPhone is not connected to WiFi when locked (that is all night).

*Will it be a good idea to keep it charged all night* so that the WiFi is enable and we do not get idiotic data sent over 3G? Until we come to know the exact way to eliminate this.

Thanks

Yes IPhone used 3g when locked/sleeping.

I way around is keep it charging the Iphone at night, this will make Iphone use WiFi.

Hope this helps.

I totally agree with you. there might be thousands of user who might have not realized until they were billed. I strongly say this is NOT a fair practice.

BulaRae wrote:
I am really just stunned and amazed that nobody from Apple and/or AT&T has at least come and made a statement on this thread yet. It's pathetic, really.

I visit a travel website where representatives of major hotel chains and airlines will weigh in on threads of issues and complaints and at least provide a response that says "you are heard".

This is a really big deal and a huge mess/hole they are going to have to climb out of if they have been inaccurately charging millions of customers for who knows how long and they can't or won't prove to us what the data transfers are for, and remaining silent about it only makes it an even bigger deal.