The iPhone 5 uses Cellular Data over WiFi?

I don't know if it means anything here but my sister and her partner were both getting high usage alerts from Verizon. When my sister checked the actual usage number was no where near 50% yet. Verizon told her not to worry about the alerts that it was just glitch on Verizon's behalf and Verizon did something to reset the warnings. She hasn't had any problem since. However with all the talk of excessive data overages she's turned everything off (crippling the phone of course).

Update on my situation,

I have tried to make certain that any non essential data hungry apps have their network access disabled. Also I have cellular data turned off and wi-fi on while I'm at home. If I'm not moving around with the phone I leave it plugged into my charger and right in front of my wireless router on 5 GHz instead of the busier 2.4 GHz frequency. I know it's not a fix but it seems to have plugged the leak for the time being. Last night I went out for dinner and then too my aunts house. I was out of the house for about four hours. I had cellular data turned on the entire time and even did some Internet surfing. Today I see that my gig allowance has only dropped by .002 gig.

Another Thankful poster, but seriously folks this is a huge problem here and from it what is sounds like Apple & our carriers are not taking any responsibility at this point. Wait til everyones bills start coming in & there will be chaos. This is far from over. We are fortunate to have noticed right away. I still have 5 days to return my iphone 5 & if I don't get some reassurance in the next day or two, I will be doing exactly that. I can certainly understand there would be some difference using LTE...but seriously folks this isn't funny. You purchase a new phone but cannot use it. This is SAD!! & I'm truly upset.

I reset the Network settings, but I have no idea if this worked. Any way I can determine this??

Yes Essex, I am also most likely going to go back to an Android phone - I think we have a few more days to decide, too. Some people posting on here think we are crazy for not waiting it out but I need to be connected constantly and don't really care what kind of phone I have. Resetting networks settings probably won't do anything - I'm not a technical expert but I did a factory reset and that did nothing.

Verizon just updated my iPhone 5's "Carrier Settings" Not sure if it's relevant, just reporting it.

I just got the same thing. I'm curious to see if this does anything.

Interesting. You learned this via text message?

I got a popup notification when I unlocked my screen saying that my carrier settings had been updated and I needed to restart my phone for the change to take effect.

Same here.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5526

FIXED!!!!!!!

Seems like this fixes part of the problem but we are also seeing incredibly inflated data usage (compared to our second iPhone5 doing same tasks) while connected to towers only... I am hopeful, though.

Great find! I will test out the phone on my home and work WiFi over the next few days. Hopefully this fixes the particular problem I was having. Thank you!

i had both issues mentioned. within days of getting my iphone 5 (which i recieved on the 21st) i got texts from verizon telling me i had used up 50% of my allowed data which is 2gb. a few days later i got the same message telling me i had used up 75%. i called verizon because on my previous smart phone i was only using about .5gb a MONTH and somehow i had already used up 75% of my 2 gigs in a matter of a week?

also during this time i noticed that my iphone5 was using cellular data when i had been on wifi the entire time.

******SO I called verizon about the data usage. she said that since there were only 8 or so days left on my billing cycle when i got my phone, verizon prorated the rest of the month by an estimated usage. Im not exactly sure how it works but it seems that they divde up the gigs by the month, and in my 8 days i was only allowed .4 of a gig, thus the messages were saying i had used 75% of the .4 of a gig. this made at least some sense because i was about to take my iphone back if it had used 2 gigs of data in a week.

seems like the using data over wifi issue has been fixed too with the carrier update sent out a little bit ago.

hope this helps. as for those of you whose phones and carriers are actually showing gigs of usage, then i have nothing to offer you

Thanks for the link. This fixed my cell usage while on wifi. I still don't understand why Verizon and Apple won't tell us there is an issue. They obviously knew about it but let everyone waste thier time calling and exchanging phones. I disagree with their lack of customer service on these matters.

I agree, I maybe over reacting & I found out in the past few hours, I cannot return my phone even if I wanted to as I have more than 30 minutes talk time since I bought the phone 8 days ago. So everyone out there...If you purchase an iphone5...DON"T CALL ANYONE! Wait 15 days before you call someone, that way you can return it for a refund. Yes! I am being sarcastic. How ridiculous to have a refund policy where you are only allowed 30 min talk time before a refund is null & void. OK ..since I got that out of the way..yes, I talked to Fido again and the rep was pretty cool considering how upset I was. I really did not want to return my phone, only wanted the data usage problem rectified. She told me to go to privacy ..location services and turn off all my apps. They all absorb LTE data if turned on. .When you need to use an app like GPS it will tell you to turn it on. Oh and she gave me another 500mb so I can determine if this solved the problem before my new month starts on the 3rd. She also mentioned to turn off the apps working in the background. I generally do this anyway. I am doing everything I can to save data usuage for now, but I shouldn't have to worry about it. Thanks for letting me vent everyone & I am hoping that in a weeks time I will be laughing & will have all forgotten this weeks woe's.

Doing the Settings>General>About fix totally fixed the problem! No more cellular data while I'm on wifi. Thanks guys.