Mysterious Data Usage in Middle of Night

I wonder why they removed the unlimited data plan? Now we have to worry about going over the 2gb if thats the one we chose.. I remember when I had the first iphone right before it broke for some reason at&t took off the data plan on my phone and I received a $2,000 something bill from data, I called them and right away they removed that said it was an error on their part and for some reason my unlimited data plan was removed. I don't even know how much gb's I used, must have been a lot. lol

This is the number one reason I didn't change anything on my account when I upgraded to my iP4. Luckily the only option that would have appealed to me at all is the tethering option for when I travel and could then use my laptop in locations that do not have wifi, like my parents house. But they do have 3G.

After reviewing my monthly data usage I saw that my wife only every once in awhile goes over 250 mb. I however, routinely go over 300+ mb and since there is no 500 mb option I figured the unlimited plan with no tethering would benefit me more than 250mb or 2gb with tethering. Plus I did not want to have to pay technically twice for the same data that I would be using anyway, just on a larger screen.

What I would like to see though is maybe an option to add something like tethering for month to month usage for those times that it would be useful and then not pay for those other times it wouldn't be. Like pay for a month of tethering for like $5-$10 only for the time frame that I am going up to see my parents and then be able to cancel it when I get back home. All this without affecting my unlimited data plan.

I hear ya though with the downloading thing though. Test out the suggestions that they mentioned. Try the airplane mode option but leave wifi still on. Or try turning the celular data option in the Settings section off and see if it keeps doing it. Not exactly sure what constitutes as celular data though, is that voice and data or just data? either way it is an option to try. This way you can still receive phone calls and email.

I understand about having to get emails and phone calls at any time, but do you really wakeup in the middle of the night when you hear the little email ding and check it? If not then why not just set it up to either fetch hourly or manually. When you wake up in the morning just open the mail app and it should automaticaly start downloading or hit the refresh button and your mail will download pretty quick.

Make sure you have push notifications off, maybe turn off your Location Services option as well. Shut down safari if it is running in the background. Give those a try and see if it still keeps doing it.

My phone will be here today and I signed up for the 200 MB plan. I am new to the iphone and wasn't sure how much data I will be using.

Now, it seems that phones send/receive data all on their on and will cause many users to go over their limit. I talked to a friend who has used one for several years about how much data I would need before choosing a plan. We looked at his data usage and he was also sending/receiving data early in the morning. He has the unlimited plan so it doesn't matter. He called AT&T to inquire about this data and was told it was required by the phone/apple and that if he lowered his plan, that data would not be charged against his usage. This was close to the the first of June.

Has anyone on a limited plan actually gotten a bill and have been charged for going over their plan because of these early morning transfers?

Just checked my cellular data usage on my phone today, 648MB DL and 127MB UL, I nearly SH1T a brick! I've only had the phone 3 days and on crummy Orange UK plan with only 500MB allowance, so I logged on to the orange account website and find that I have only used 50Mb!

I think that the phone either for some reason came with a ton of data on the counter or they used the same formula for cell data as they did for calcutating the signal bars!:-)

Hey everyone. It looks to me like we are getting data from the wrong place. Data usage being shown to us online at ATT.com is subject to posting vs. actual use and is kind of a mystery. However, the phone has the ability to track sending and receiving by going to Settings/General/Usage then look at cellular network data. There is shows how much was Sent and Received and it is real time.

Here is what I've found out. First, it is not what I am sending, I am receiving huge amounts of data. I've had my phone for 2 weeks and I think usage data might have been reset when I had them reload the OS while trying to figure out the problem on July 2 at the Apple Store. Since then I've sent 14MB and received 249MB.

I closed email and set it to only check manually. After several hours I checked the usage data and put it in a note. Then I opened email and had it check email. Then I checked usage again.

Email received 4 messages, without attachments, and the phone received 3MB of data. No attachments but I do have it downloading html (Load remote images setting). I tried the experiment again this time watching email on my laptop and had the iphone check mail when I saw an email come in. This one was text only and again, 3mb data usage.

Kind of off topic, however, is there a way to load the images from within the mail application one email at a time? I'm jumping to conclusions here, but am curious.

Perhaps this will give the search a new direction because we are going nowhere fast.

This won't be very helpful, but I've had the iPhone 4 for a couple of weeks. Since 7/2 I've sent 1.2 mb and recieved 3.0 mb. Almost all email. Something is wacky with the numbers you're getting.
Good luck in the hunt.

I just looked up my AT&T bills online and have notice a change. My April-May bill showed muliple data entries throughout the day from 1KB to 1000KB. My May-June bill only has one large data entry per day send around 1:00 to 2:00 in the morning.

Must be some kind of change in the tracking process.

In reviewing my data usage, My iPhone 4 data usage is about the same as it was with my 3Gs, but the breakdown shows several blips of data useage between 1 and 3 am when I am in a wireless environment and most often asleep. Then I noticed my son's, who now has my 3Gs is fast approaching the 200mb limit with 11 days left in the cycle. This didn't make much sense as apart from an advanced class he is taking over the summer, he has been home most of the time he would be using data and we have wireless.
I checked the data usage breakdown and found EVERY DAY this month between 1 and 3am there is data usage indicated anywhere from 3KB to a whopping 18,991KB at 1:13am one day when he was asleep.
I called AT&T to verify that the time stamp is accurate (it is) and then I called COMCAST. I am in the Boston area. It seems Comcast has been shutting down for maintenance around the time periods in question every day this month! They do not give advance notice of this maintenance! I suggest you contact your internet provider to find out if the same thing is happening to you.

But something else to be aware of is could Applications or Internet pages be staying open even if you are not using your phone? With multi-tasking I suspect more applications are staying open unless you manually close them in the multitask dock.
Hopefully in an upcoming IOS version there will be a more convenient way to shut down rogue apps that stay open sucking data besides shutting the phone completely off every night.

I am on O2 in the UK, just checked my data usage having had the phone for a week, 1.2GB received and 274MB Sent. My plan allows 500mb usage per month, although we get unlimited Data till Sept.
I only received about 100 emails without attachments and sent none. I looked on a few websites and signed into a couple of forums and posted a few replies to pm's that i had received. I used the mapping and compass for at most a half hour. I am at work all day so dont have hours to fiddle around, and in the evening the phone connects to my WiFi network.
Does the data usage display on the phone accumulate via wifi as well as 3g?
I hope so.....

Maps seems to use a lot of data. Jusat went outside for 2 minutes with Maps running and I checked the data usage, when I went out, usage was 80kb, when I got back, almost 2.9MB
I shant be using that app too often!

I don't currently have an iPhone, and I've been torn between getting a 3GS or a 4. I have to say that this is pretty shocking that the phone is using this much data (even the story of the 3GS a few posts back).

I currently have an unlimited data plan, but that would go away when I switch carriers to AT&T.

I'm really curious about what is eating up so much data. For those that have large data usage, do you have Exchange email set up (I know you can set that up for Gmail along with Google calendar and contacts)? That is what I was going to do, to save me from entering in all of my contacts manually, but now I'm rethinking that strategy as well.

It seems to me that this is something that should be addressed. I know that my phone only logs its data a couple of times a day, with the big one being about 5:30 in the morning, so it may be that it's an aggregate for the whole day, but still... 20-30MB/day will still put those users on the 200MB plan WAY over their usage, especially if these data charges are showing up with wifi turned on.

Wow. Just came across this thread so thought I would share a thorough explanation of what happened to me and what ATT said.

My wife and I both have iPhones on a Family Plan. I have the 3GS and my wife has the 3G. We both have iOS4 installed. My wife and I average about 75MB of data to 100 Max per month combined. We both are on Wifi 95% of the time so we use 3G data very little and our past history shows this. Thinking this through, I decided the 200 MB plan was way more than needed so I downgraded thing the 30 bucks combined savings would be nice. I did this at the end of June. On July 4th while watching the fireworks I got a text message form ATT saying I had used 162MB of data just 3 DAYS into my new billing cycle and I should consider paying to upgrade to the next level. I was blown away. There was no way in three days I used more data then we normally use in three months combined in 3 days. So I went to the Usage site for ATT and saw a download of 162MB of data on July 2nd at 1:19AM.

Now keep in mind, at this time I had already been asleep for about 3 hours AND my house is fully covered by wifi which my phone is always automatically connected to in my house with zero signal weakness. Clearly an issue.

I called ATT and told them they could look at my previous history and clearly see this must be some sort of mistake. They said maybe my phone did a software update?!? I said the iPhone updates its software through iTunes, and even it did, it would do it over Wifi in my house. They said they could not explain it. I pressed on now realizing I will forever be screwed by this and worrying about this now that my unlimited data plan is gone. After 3 hours and 3 calls later, I was able to get back to the unlimited plan. However, they could never explain what the **** that download was or how it got on my phone. Very scary. 30 bucks more for me and for no good reason. And yes now that I am back I have barely used any data.

{quote:title=Jeff Bessling wrote:} And yes now that I am back I have barely used any data.{quote}

This is the part that REALLY concerns me, and I'm sure many other people.

Something is going on, and AT&T really needs to figure out what it is.

I demanded to speak with a supervisor. Went through my whole case with him. Waited for 30 mins to get him on the phone by the way but I waited... and he said he would put me back on unlimited plan. That was it. I am out 30 bucks a month more because they do not know why I all of sudden had a mysterious data transmission.