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Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Sep 22, 2010 11:33 AMby brm123,Getting back to the PRIMARY issues:
1) Why are the transfers so large
2) What is the source of the transfers (from what app or ?)
3) What is the content of the transfers (what info does the data contain)
4) What is the destination of the transfers
And what about the post that said AT&T was aware of this known issue??? -
Sep 22, 2010 11:36 AMby ToddBradley,I've been having unusual high data transfers in the middle of the night, typically between midnight and 1:00am Mountain time. They can be anywhere from about 8 MB to a nightly series of 2 or 3 adding up to 30 MB. I started taking notes to track what's up and have started to notice a couple things.
First, the start of these high data transfer events doesn't appear to be linked to when I upgraded from iPhone 3 to iPhone 4, or from iOS 4.0 to 4.1, or from downloading any application.
Second, AT&T's website (and thus my bill) says that I'm using about twice as much data as the iPhone itself says (Settings > General > Usage). This is pretty fishy. If only one device is associated with my account, how can the device and the account disagree by 100%? It seems to show that either (a) AT&T's billing is buggy or fraudulent, or (b) Apple's phone is secretly transferring data that it's not reporting on the Usage screen. Neither of those options is very appealing, and either one could be grounds for a class-action lawsuit.
I called AT&T customer service this morning. I got a very friendly rep. She agreed with me that the recent data use pattern is very unusual, and different than the pattern I've had for the past two years. She offered to upgrade me to the 2 gig plan, as I expected. But once I explained that isn't going to solve the real issue here, she said she'll credit me this month's overage fee, do some research, and contact me next week.
Meanwhile, I'm downloading all the data use details from the AT&T website. Once I put it in a spreadsheet, I'll do some slicing and dicing and see if I can see any patterns. When did these 12:30am transfers start? Have they always been there but have grown over time? -
Sep 22, 2010 1:28 PMby Handy-nan,I've posted this before, but responding
Mine is a 3G phone...I used the "graph my data usage" tool on my account. There was a definite increase on my June and July usage. This is completely in line w/ATT doing away w/the unlimited usage, also in line w/when I noticed the data dumps changing to single early AM dumps. Fortunately, I have kept my unlimited plan but am thinking of adding a 2nd iPhone which will require a limited plan. -
Sep 22, 2010 1:36 PMby Paul Conigliaro,I noticed the same thing, though mine was in May. It definitely seems like AT&T changed something in their data billing system around that time to prepare for the tiered plans. But that does beg the question of some international users reporting seeing the same or similar early morning data items on their bill. -
Sep 22, 2010 6:28 PMby brm123,Maybe we are asking the wrong people. I have sent the following to Saurik@Saurik.com:
Saurik,
AT&T and Apple are both ducking this issue. I brought it up some time ago. I do not believe it has anything to do with apps. Is this something you could take a quick peek and comment on?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2450738&tstart=0&messageID=123 16472#12316472
Thank you and I support your work financially,
Maybe if more of us ask him he would take an interest in the problem. I believe he is the man that can answer this question. -
Sep 22, 2010 7:21 PMby ToddBradley,I'm not sure it would accurate to say "AT&T and Apple are both ducking this issue." I haven't seen anyone in this thread mention talking to anyone in either company beyond the first or second line of tech support / customer service.
And if Apple higher-ups do know about this issue, do you think any of them are going to admit it or act on it, and risk being the next Papermaster? -
Sep 23, 2010 9:03 AMby RandoMan,I've been monitoring this thread with great interest since I got my phone in late August.
As another data point, I reset my phone's usage data when my 2nd billing cycle started two weeks ago. So far AT&T reports that I've used 13.93MB and my usage report says that I've used a combined total of 13.84MB. So this is very close.
Also, I'm seeing 1-2am transfers with sizes all over the map: 898KB, 15KB, 1969KB, 2KB, 19KB, 7KB, 50KB. I have the following settings:
- Make sure Safari has nothing open
- Location Services on, but only Maps is enabled
- 3G enabled
- Cellular data enabled
- Data roaming off
I had a big hit of 9836KB on the 21st that posted at 11:37am. I was certainly in Wi-Fi then, but my phone was sleeping. In fact, that evening around 6:00pm I was using Maps and GPS while driving across town (about 30mins intermittent usage), so I wonder if somehow the time-stamp is just plain wrong. I don't see anything showing up in the billing report for the rest of that evening.
Also noted that when I total up the items in my bill I get 14.27MB, yet the bill reports 13.93MB, so perhaps some of the items are not counted. -
Sep 23, 2010 9:42 AMby Paul Conigliaro,Keep in mind that each data item on your bill did not necessarily happen at that time. Originally, AT&T noted each individual transfer on a bill and there were cases where bills would be hundreds of pages long. To combat this, AT&T consolidates usage reporting, but the exact method of that consolidation isn't really advertised.
I think in your case, you're doing fine. If your data counter on your phone closely matches your bill, I wouldn't worry. However, several people here are finding pretty large discrepancies, which is a big deal.
What I'm curious about, and I'm not sure if anyone's noted this yet, is if the phone data counter is noting any overnight transfers. Not sure why I haven't tried this yet, but it would be trivial to note the transfer totals before going to bed and then again when waking up. (Though I would turn off things like push notifications and email fetching.) If the phone shows no change in totals, it's doubtful anything is actually being transmitted.
So it seems, to me at least, the 2AM transfer is less of the problem than the difference people are seeing in their iPhone data totals vs their bills.
I think what bothers me most about this whole ordeal is the inconsistency in statements. Specifically when the AT&T CEO stated that these overnight billing items do not count against your total usage, when they clearly do. -
Sep 23, 2010 11:52 AMby ToddBradley,{quote:title=Paul Conigliaro wrote:}
I think what bothers me most about this whole ordeal is the inconsistency in statements. Specifically when the AT&T CEO stated that these overnight billing items do not count against your total usage, when they clearly do.
{quote}
I didn't catch anything about the AT&T CEO making a statement about this. Could you provide a link to his statement, please? -
Sep 23, 2010 12:02 PMby Paul Conigliaro,I was mistaken. It wasn't the CEO, but a spokesperson.
{quote}This is a routine update of your daily data activity on your device to ensure the accuracy of your data billing. Customers are not charged for data usage, given that no data session is generated. It's not uncommon for devices that are ‘always on', like iPhone, to process data event records for billing purposes after a certain amount of inactivity or after long periods of time. It's also separate from how our system lets you monitor your data consumption.{quote}
This was on July 29th.
http://gizmodo.com/5599621/those-nighttime-iphone-downloads-are-actually-not-dow nloads
(I normally wouldn't link to Gizmodo, but they seem to be the original source for this quote.) -
Sep 23, 2010 1:56 PMby lightsp33d,Paul Conigliaro wrote:
I was mistaken. It wasn't the CEO, but a spokesperson.
{quote}This is a routine update of your daily data activity on your device to ensure the accuracy of your data billing. Customers are not charged for data usage, given that no data session is generated. It's not uncommon for devices that are ‘always on', like iPhone, to process data event records for billing purposes after a certain amount of inactivity or after long periods of time. It's also separate from how our system lets you monitor your data consumption.{quote}
This was on July 29th.
http://gizmodo.com/5599621/those-nighttime-iphone-downloads-are-actually-not-dow nloads
(I normally wouldn't link to Gizmodo, but they seem to be the original source for this quote.)
I like the microcellhubsnoop idea mentioned in the gizmodo thread. Has anyone here tried that? It'll surely tell us what's going on. -
Sep 24, 2010 9:53 AMby ToddBradley,Well, since Apple deleted two posts from user "brm123" that used to be here, I guess that means the company can't deny that they know about this issue. Someone at AAPL is reading this thread and has either escalated the problem or is actively ignoring it. Either way, it's a provable data point of what they knew and when they knew it. Hi, Apple person!
Back to topic, I just got my AT&T bill, since my billing period ended yesterday. It looks like the customer service agent followed through on her promise to not charge me for the 140 MB overage. It shows up as a line item on the bill, but with a price of $0.00. I'm wondering how many others haven't called AT&T and just paid the $15 (or $30 or whatever) fee and didn't notice it.
Regarding the microcell snooping idea, I don't have a microcell. Otherwise I'd try it out in a heartbeat.
And regarding the Gizmodo article, I sent an email to Jesus Diaz (the Gizmodo author) to let him know what he reposted from AT&T's spokesperson was a lie. Gizmodo's not exactly known for their investigative journalism, though, so I doubt anything will come out of it. -
Sep 24, 2010 10:34 AMby samjackson,I don't have MobileMe, thus don't have Push for it. But I do have Exchange Push. Going back over old bills, I see the same usage as early as January 2009, which I think was before Push was available.
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