Dear Apple,
2 weeks ago, just before the end of my billing cycle, AT&T alerted me saying that I had used 95% of my monthly 200MB data plan on my iPhone 4S. Historically (since my iPhone 1) I had consistently used no more than 150MB per month so I had chosen the cheaper plan. I disabled all cellular data, waited for the next billing cycle, and reenabled cellular data after the cycle had started.
After 3 days, I received another alert saying that I had already exceeded the new month's limit, and that I was now being billed an extra month. Inspection of my bills suggest that my 'phone had started to make very large downloads - one as big as 83MB. This is something it had never done before, and I had not installed any new apps recently.
This was very surprising and the several AT&T support people I have spoken to agreed that it was strange that my data usage had suddenly increased 10 to 100 fold. They could not help, other than the usual suggestions of killing Apps all the time, using WiFi, avoiding large downloads on cellular data, and attempt to monitor total usage closely against running applications etc. They also said that they do not have any way of determining which application is using the network, and that their billing log updates may be as inaccurate as in the last 24 hours, so can't be used to pinpoint when the downloads happen.
Cellular data is like any other utility. For example, the water company has a meter on my house that measures my total usage. However, if my bill suddenly exceeds its trend, I can invite their technicians into the house to inspect for leaks. I can also turn off all the taps individually, rather than cutting off the water supply to my whole house.
Given that people's data usage is only increasing, and that ISPs are introducing more and more bandwidth caps, this problem will only get much worse. One of the AT&T representatives admitted that he has exactly the same problem with his daughter's iPhone but did not have any easy way of determining the cause.
Apple has decided to lock down iOS. Consequently, no-one else can install monitoring tools that would breach the AppStore API rules, for example, a kernel extension & daemon that monitor network traffic on a per-application basis, unless the 'phone is jail-broken. (I could write this myself if it were allowed.) But Apple has not provided sufficient tools to manage this problem. This is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Unfortunately, Steve (Jobs) was wrong when he said that users should not be concerned with application management. The ISPs are forcing this on us.
I strongly recommend the following is added to all new versions of iOS:
1) Apple needs to expand the granularity of the /General/Network/Cellular Data system preference. As well as this "all in one" switch, we need a switch for each installed application, so that on a per-application basis, the application can be FORCED to only use WiFi. (This includes iOS system features such as location, notification, iAd services etc.)
2) Apple needs to replace the /General/Usage/Cellular Usage to show a screen similar to the storage space usage that indicates how much cellular data is used on a per-application basis. As it is, it is almost useless, and AT&T's tool is better.
3) The idea of allowing all apps to remain running in the background is unacceptable. Instead, on a per-application basis, pressing the "Home" button should kill the app, rather than leaving it running in the background and listed in the "double press Home button" screen.
4) The Notification system should be used locally to alert the user that an application or the whole system limit is being breached.
5) An improvement on #1 would allow a cellular data quota to be imposed on a per-application basis, which would kill the app if breached.
6) All of this is really annoying from a usability point of view. Consequently, I recommend that when configuring a new iPhone, the defaults for current and new apps should be set according to the data plan. Aggressively for low data plans like mine, less aggressively for more generous plans, but the hard limits should automatically disable cellular data if it about to be breached.
These are both very urgent. You will lose customers to Android if you do not tackle the usage problem, now that ISPs are limiting cellular data bandwidth. I have been a happy Mac and iPhone customer for many years, but I have to admit that this sudden usage problem (which I have STILL not managed to diagnose successfully) is really, really annoying. I have no problem paying for bandwidth that I have chosen to consume. But not being able to dictate limits on apps that have been imposed on me by my ISP reduce the value of apps hugely because I cannot trust them.
Regards,
Chris
