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Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Nov 1, 2010 12:11 PMby jdbartram,Here are some discoveries that may explain my wife's unexplained data charges, but do not explain AT&T's billing methods.
There were two large items (38,999 MB and 19,721 MB) on October 15 and 16, when my wife was away from wifi. She did download two apps for the grandchildren to play with, but according to the iTunes store records, the two apps were downloaded on a different single day, October 17. Maybe iTunes store aggregates too?
There were also three days in early October with large downloads according to AT&T. The iTunes store records that she downloaded apps on two of those days, but not on the third when the largest data use (68,842KB) supposedly occurred. I am about 99% sure that she was home on wifi when these downloads were made, but I am not positive.
So, I'm wondering why AT&T and maybe iTunes timestamps usage and purchases if they are meaningless, which they seem to be.
For the record, since I became aware of these problems on October 26, and started reading this thread and disabled diagnostic reporting and killed all active apps on my wife's iPhone, the usage reported by the iPhone, the app DataMan and AT&T has agreed within a few KB. I don't think this proves anything yet, though. I believe those who have experienced excessive charges by AT&T and I think it is serious and troubling - even if it is a small percentage of all users which I am not yet convinced it is. -
Nov 1, 2010 2:58 PMby boeki,I can only join in on this issue.. people ask if the issue exists on other carriers, YES - ROGERS. It is chewing up data constantly and never stops. I run into overage on day 3 after switch from my iphone 2 to iphone 4 (650 MB in 3 days). I now uninstalled all apps, turned off all email accounts, closed all programs (multi-tasking). I turned off cellular data as I am in overage already. Only run WIFI now.
It is still using up 10-20MB per hour!! I use DataMan and DataCounter, both keep counting and never stop.
Solutions are urgently welcome.. thanks!! -
Nov 1, 2010 3:15 PMby chcn,That is strange. I have been with Rogers for years, and have used iPhone 3G, 3GS, and now an iPhone 4 (since the launch date this summer) and I've never noticed unexplained data usage. The counter in Settings agrees with my bill within about 5% most of the time, and it only moves when I do things like surf, check email, stream a video, etc. In other words, I can always explain my usage more or less.
What part of the country are you in? (I'm in Calgary.)
Have any other Rogers users out there had this problem? -
Nov 1, 2010 4:06 PMby chcn,That is strange. My next thought was some glitch with a Microsoft Exchange email account, because I once had an issue with push email that was using up tons of CPU time and running down the battery on an iPhone 3G. I never did resolve the issue and just turned off push instead. But you say you'd even deleted email accounts?
I wonder if this is some bug in iOS or in the billing system. Anyone out there know if Rogers (which used to be a licensee of the AT&T brand) uses the same billing system at AT&T?
But you say the iPhone counter(s) is/are going up too? Not just Rogers' counter? That would seem to point to a bug in iOS or something else like that on the iPhone side. Or maybe some kind of virus? Or maybe an Exchange server you used to be connected to bugging you?
Since you've gone to the trouble to uninstall apps, etc., anyway, try doing one more step: Try restoring the iPhone to its factory settings in iTunes and then set it up as a new phone (ie, don't restore from a backup). Does it keep happening after that? If not, it might be some kind of software problem. -
Nov 1, 2010 4:14 PMby Lawrence Finch,You have a different problem. Your phone is actually using data; most of the posts in this thread are about data usage that is billed but does not show in the Usage counter on the phone.
There is an app on your phone that is constantly sending or receiving data. Assuming that the phone is not hacked or jailbroken it is one of the following:
1. Music streaming (Pandora, Wunderadio, etc).
2. A social networking app (Skype, Yahoo, loopt, facebook, etc).
3. A Safari page that has auto-refresh.
4. Game Center.
5. A Push email account.
For the volumes you describe streaming is the most likely. But if you have any apps like those in 1 to 3 try killing them (while on the home screen double press the HOME button, then hold your finger on one of the apps until it wriggles and tap the "-" red button).
If you have EVER run Game Center this is likely the problem. Killing it is not enough; you need to go to Settings/General/Restrictions and disable multi-player games.
If it is none of these and you have push email accounts do the following:
1. Settings/Mail,Contacts,Calendar, then tap the name of the Push account and turn it OFF (turn off the ACCOUNT, not PUSH).
2. Exit from settings by taping the Back button, then go to the Home screen and launch email. Verify that the account is gone.
3. Reboot the phone - hold HOME and SLEEP until an Apple logo appears, ignoring "Slide to power off" (about 10 seconds).
4. When the phone finishes restarting, go back into Settings and turn the email account(s) back on.
This process will force-terminate any 'stale" connections that the mail app is trying to sync over. -
Nov 1, 2010 6:21 PMby boeki,Hi Lawrence,
Thanks for your detailed analysis and response. Much appreciated!!
1. Music streaming (Pandora, Wunderadio, etc).
re: never used streaming, had already uninstalled Pandora
2. A social networking app (Skype, Yahoo, loopt, facebook, etc).
re: had already uninstalled skype, facebook, no other social apps.
3. A Safari page that has auto-refresh.
re: closed all open pages, cleared cache, cookies, finally just set restriction for Safari based on your below guidance for Game Centre.
4. Game Center.
re: i never used game centre, but followed your instructions and set restrictions, turned of notifications, closed app under multi-tasking
5. A Push email account.
re: had not already turned off the push email but deleted the account.
Followed your instructions with turn off (was off), reboot and turn on of the my remaining gmail account.
Is there any network monitoring app that allows me to see what service is sending/receiving data? If not on the phone perhaps there is an app that can check on my wireless router side? -
Nov 1, 2010 8:47 PMby Staycee,I can confirm as well that this is happening with other carriers...I joined with Virgin Mobile two & a half weeks ago and bought the iPhone 4. I have 500MB of included data in my plan and I've been monitoring my usage very carefully (despite the Virgin rep assuring me repeatedly that no one EVER goes over 500 MB, I am too cheap to risk getting charged for overages). For the past couple of weeks I've been gradually increasing to the 100MB mark when all of a sudden two days ago it jumped to 543MB used! Reviewed my Unbilled Usage on the Virgin website and it said I used 396MB last Thursday afternoon. Spoke with a Virgin rep today who confirmed it is virtually impossible for anyone to use that much data in a day unless you are watching movies all day long (which I do not, I don't use YouTube and only check Hotmail, Facebook and Kijiji) and have a case opened to investigate, although after reading all these comments I'm not hopeful they're going to do anything about it other than blame it on the iPhone continuously updating. But we will see.
Also there are major discrepancies between my Cellular Data Usage as tracked on my iPhone and what my Virgin account has. In my case my phone is telling me I've used 1056MB of data, yet Virgin has me charged with only 543MB. Sure hope Virgin is right in this case. Until my plan rolls over into a new month (two more weeks to go)I've disable the 3G network and am running only off WiFi. I love my iPhone but this issue is beyond frustrating! -
Nov 1, 2010 9:05 PMby chcn,Just to clarify, these should be considered to be troubleshooting steps that might help identify and stop whatever process is stuck/chewing up data. You shouldn't normally have to operate with these restrictions. I have used Game Centre, Skype, Facebook, push notifications, etc. and data only flows in a nice orderly way when it's supposed to.
I will emphasize though that if nothing Lawrence said changes things, you really should try a restore in iTunes and then choose the option to set up the phone as a new iPhone (ie, do not restore from a backup), not permanently, but just as a troubleshooting step. (I had to do this recently to prove to a Genius bar "Genius" that an issue I was having was hardward-related and not software. It's not a big deal.) If you do this and the problem goes away, that would tend to point the finger at some software or configuration problem. At that point you could try restoring from a backup, but you might be better off just keeping the new configuration and reinstalling apps and music etc. from iTunes. -
Nov 1, 2010 9:19 PMby chcn,Now that's a new one. The phone counter showing more data usage than the carrier?
I'm not sure you're having the problem that this thread is mostly concerned with, though you may be having a similar problem to the one boeki is talking about.
I haven't read every post on this thread, but it seems like more people (especially the ones in the US) are complaining about usage showing up on their bills that doesn't show up on their phone counters. Though perhaps there is also an issue with "real" data usage (ie, which shows up on the phone's counter) that they can't explain. In that case I would recommend Lawrence's troubleshooting suggestions immediately above, as well as the restore suggestion I gave above.
By the way, no rep should be promising that you can't/won't use 500MB in a month. It depends entirely on what you do. While it's true that it took me more than a year to get to the point where I used that much in a month, I recently have started coming close. One month recently I travelled a lot and used a lot of Google maps, etc. And just this month I streamed Global National's newscast on my bus ride home a few times. That's 100MB each time. So it's not hard to burn through the data if you try! -
Nov 2, 2010 6:12 AMby Lawrence Finch,chcn wrote:
Just to clarify, these should be considered to be troubleshooting steps that might help identify and stop whatever process is stuck/chewing up data. You shouldn't normally have to operate with these restrictions. I have used Game Centre, Skype, Facebook, push notifications, etc. and data only flows in a nice orderly way when it's supposed to.
Yes, I agree.
I will emphasize though that if nothing Lawrence said changes things, you really should try a restore in iTunes and then choose the option to set up the phone as a new iPhone (ie, do not restore from a backup), not permanently, but just as a troubleshooting step. (I had to do this recently to prove to a Genius bar "Genius" that an issue I was having was hardward-related and not software. It's not a big deal.) If you do this and the problem goes away, that would tend to point the finger at some software or configuration problem. At that point you could try restoring from a backup, but you might be better off just keeping the new configuration and reinstalling apps and music etc. from iTunes.
Agree with this also. Best of luck! -
Nov 2, 2010 6:17 AMby Lawrence Finch,chcn wrote:
Now that's a new one. The phone counter showing more data usage than the carrier?
I haven't mentioned this before, but I've seen it go both ways. I still have the unlimited plan so it is academic for me, but I've had (rare) times when the phone showed more than appeared on the bill, times when they agreed, and most often times when my bill showed more than the phone. The one time it was a problem was when I was roaming in UK and the phone's counter showed 60 MB but my bill showed 90 MB. I had a 100 MB roaming data plan in effect, so it didn't cost me anything extra (beyond the exorbitant $120 charge for the 100 MB roaming plan).
If anything this inconsistency is worse than always being "overcharged", as it shows there is no reliable way to predict usage. -
Nov 2, 2010 6:33 AMby Bill Bard,On both mine and my wife's iPhone, I have seen multi megabytes show up on ATT every day or two around 12:30AM. At that time, the phones are not being used and are in our house and should be using the wifi network. So it seems that the phones are using the cell network on purpose. -
Nov 2, 2010 6:51 AMby Lawrence Finch,Please check your current bill, or even better, online. these early morning transfers have stopped for a lot of people.
It should not be using WiFi unless the phone is not asleep. WiFi is turned off to save battery when the phone is asleep, so any data transfers will be cellular.
However, it is likely that the transfers are not actually happening at 12:30 AM; rather, transfers from the day before have been aggregated and reported in the billing system at 12:30 AM. Or maybe not. If you read the whole thread (which is a challenge) you will see a lot of hypotheses about what is actually happening. Lack of meaningful responses from Apple and the various carriers have led to several interesting conspiracy theories. -
Nov 2, 2010 8:50 PMby bradley.ryan,Used my phone to browse a couple basic apps yesterday - maybe a total of about 10 minutes throughout the course of the day. No music and no videos. Checked myattwireless and saw this lovely data charge...
11/01 01:59 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 153661KB
So I apparently used 150 MB yesterday? C'mon. This is getting out of control.
I should add that settings/usage/cell network data still shows only a total of 86 MB since last reset (the day before my cycle started).
