Q: The iPhone 5 uses Cellular Data over WiFi?

Just to confirm I have EVERYTHING turned off including apps turned off in background and still leaking like a seive.

Glad these suggestions have worked for some but apparently it is no silver bullet....

Just an update - it just cost me 5mb to update my newsfeed in the Facebook mobile app.  Surely that cannot be right??  I have now updated to the latest version of Facebook and a newsfeed update still costs me 350kb to update (but assume the reduction is because there is less to update on the page....).  Ouch.  I pretty much use my phone for facebook and a few games and a bit of web surfing.  Lucky I have 150gb on my wi-fi.  So much for a 4g enabled smartphone...better off getting an old nokia for calls an sms and using my kid's  ipod when home on wi-fi....

Caitybee

If I understand correctly, everything was fine for a few months and then recently went nutso.  If so, something has changed recently, like some new apps?  Apps can tap cel service from the OS without asking, no matter the settings.  You may have added one of these rogues.  Another possibility is a long-running app or service, like your mail service, has gone flake.  I suggest you go thru any recent apps, check any settings they may have for cel permissions, and remove them then add them back after a bit of monitoring, as you have started to do.  Same with your mail service, remove it then add it back.  Reboot your phone.  Wipe the phone and start over if nothing else works.

If none of that works, I would suggest taking the phone in to Apple to get checked out for hardware issues. You are still in warranty, and a different phone might be a possible try.

By the way, a one gig plan should be plenty, with moderate use of cel assisted services.  I use no more than 300Gb per month, even with heavy road use.

Good luck!

Thanks David.

I have tried to delete or exclude the couple of apps I have loaded recently with no change but had not

Thought of my mail going rouge. Definitely a possibility. Will try that.  Have a booking with Genius Bar tomorrow also. Will update with how I go.

Hey guys, I have a similar problem as well while my 3G is on and my iPhone idle, data consumption would skyrocket. I notice it would increase 1-5 KB both sent and received every time I refreshed the usage page in settings.

From reading other related problems on different forums I found this solution to fix the problem I was having. Note: I'm running iOS 6.1

Ad Tracking

Settings>General>About> Scroll down to Advertising>Turn on 'Limit Ad Tracking'

Diagnostics & Usage

Settings>General>About>Scroll down to Diagnostics & Usage>Don't Send

I also deleted my iCloud account from the phone, Location Services and push email on for testing purposes.

Now my usage has been sitting at 33.0 KB sent and 131 KB received for over 3 minutes. I assume the data used was on push emails and the weather updates on the notification bar. Other than that my usage counter has been stable and didn't increase every second. Let me know if this works for anyone, only thing left is to call my carrier to remove the overage fees.

So I think I have narrowed this down to ISO 6.

Today I went to Apple and they reset the phone - problem still occurred.  Then they replaced my phone completely and we did not sync it to my cloud so it was a completely empty phone except for my sim card.  Problem still existed.

They said must be a carrier problem.  So I went to Telstra and got a new sim card.  No joy.

Rang Telstra - told me to turn my notifications off - explained I already had.  Then send your phone in for repair - repeated the fact that it was a BRAND NEW PHONE.

They had nothing to offer except that they had received lots of calls regarding excessive data lately .

(Just a side note that the Telstra 24/7 app constantly uses data to refresh  - nice earner for them lol)

Got through the billing and this was my data usage pattern:

Oct - 131MB

Nov - 400MB

Dec - 200MB

Jan (updated to ISO6 a third of the way through the cycle) 700MB

Feb - 1GB halfway through the month.....

You tell me this is not an ISO6 issue!!!!

Good the know the problem - crap to know that Apple no doubt give 2 hoots about the issue and I don't even know where to start to complain???  Anyone????

This problem has been reported for years, long before iOS 6.

Just google it.

Agreed.  It has been happening to colleagues and me on and off since the iOS 4.x days.  According to Google Analytics, my experience has been read from networks labeled apple inc. 38 times, apple inc. - 10g ashburn ide 4 times, and apple computer once.  They're aware of it.

So true Sk8Dreams. I first saw this problem with my son's 3GS running iOS 5.

Look at this error log showing how wifi was crashing left and right by location service:

So when wifi is crashed, of course it will use cellular data instead, but why is wifi so unstable and crashed every second?

Is it not a iOS bug when its system services are crashing each other every second?

Feb  5 23:09:33  kernel[0] <Debug>: IO80211AWDLPeerManager::doMonitorTimer 0 trigger 1 ms 2587 -> disable

Feb  5 23:09:33  kernel[0] <Debug>: 000530.552760 wlan.A[61] AppleBCMWLANProximityInterface::setSYNC_ENABLED():  OFF

Feb  5 23:09:34  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820174.730986]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:34  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820174.797350]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:34  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820174.810283]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:35  kernel[0] <Debug>: AppleAP3GDL::checkDataAvailable:414 DRDY was set after 0 iterations

Feb  5 23:09:35  kernel[0] <Debug>: IO80211AWDLMulticastPeer::queuePacket ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff alllocate queue for ac 0

Feb  5 23:09:36  locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 0.000s

Feb  5 23:09:38  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820178.186709]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:38  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820178.198962]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:38  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820178.202321]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:38  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820178.951260]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:41  locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 5.008s

Feb  5 23:09:44  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820184.999328]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:45  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820185.014408]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:45  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820185.422078]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:09:47  locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 10.024s

Feb  5 23:10:05  locationd[44] <Notice>: Location icon should now be in state 'Inactive'

Feb  5 23:10:17  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820217.919864]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:10:17  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820217.937080]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:10:18  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820218.414937]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:10:24  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820224.122156]: Disable WoW requested by "dataaccessd"

Feb  5 23:10:24  kernel[0] <Debug>: launchd[181] Builtin profile: PasteBoard (sandbox)

Feb  5 23:10:25  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820225.979791]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:10:27  CommCenter[58] <Notice>: Client [com.apple.persistentconnection[apsd,76]] is telling PDP context 0 to go active.

Feb  5 23:10:31  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820231.395237]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:10:31  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820231.409508]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:10:31  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820231.896266]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Look, even the error log suggested that there is a leak due to mismatch in time synchronization problem:

Feb  5 23:08:54  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820134.455149]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:08:54  wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381820134.469760]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  5 23:08:58  dataaccessd[84] <Warning>: notify name "SignificantTimeChangeNotification" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  5 23:08:58  dataaccessd[84] <Warning>: notify name "SignificantTimeChangeNotification" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  5 23:08:59  CommCenter[58] <Error>: kDataAttachStatusNotification sent, wasAttached: 1 isAttached: 0

Feb  5 23:08:59  CommCenter[58] <Error>: _ReInitThrottleTimer(): Clearing throttle timer on context ID [0] at 381820139.675840

More error log that showed location service is leaking causing wifi to fail:

Feb  6 23:49:26 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381908966.998721]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:49:30 iPhoned UserEventAgent[13] <Error>:  LockStateNotifier aksNotificationCallback posting notification: com.apple.mobile.keybagd.lock_status

Feb  6 23:49:30 iPhoned kernel[0] <Debug>: AppleKeyStore:cp_key_store_action(1)

Feb  6 23:49:30 iPhoned kernel[0] <Debug>: AppleKeyStore:Sending lock change

Feb  6 23:49:30 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:31 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:31 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:31 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:31 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:31 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:31 iPhoned locationd[44] <Warning>: notify name "com.apple.locationd.DumpDiagnostics" has been registered 20 times - this may be a leak

Feb  6 23:49:40 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381908980.552570]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:49:40 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381908980.597137]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:49:41 iPhoned CommCenter[58] <Error>: kNewServingNetwork sent, MCC: 310 MNC: 260

Feb  6 23:49:41 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381908981.803028]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:49:55 iPhoned locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 0.000s

Feb  6 23:50:34 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381909034.484692]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:50:34 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381909034.528435]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:50:35 iPhoned CommCenter[58] <Error>: kNewServingNetwork sent, MCC: 310 MNC: 26

Feb  6 23:50:35 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381909035.604370]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:50:41 iPhoned locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 0.000s

Feb  6 23:51:10 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381909070.940624]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:51:10 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381909070.990808]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:51:11 iPhoned CommCenter[58] <Error>: kNewServingNetwork sent, MCC: 310 MNC: 260

Feb  6 23:51:12 iPhoned wifid[14] <Error>: WiFi:[381909072.044050]: WiFi unquiescing requested by "locationd"

Feb  6 23:51:27 iPhoned locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 0.000s

Feb  6 23:52:13 iPhoned locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 0.000s

Feb  6 23:52:59 iPhoned locationd[44] <Notice>: received EBUSY, try kScanTypeChannel, channel, 6, rssi -60, delayed 0.000s

I'm so upset I have to join this unfortunate club. I've been using unbelievable amounts of data on my IP5 since getting it but it hasn't gone too far over. I just updated to iOS 6.1 and used 3G in 3 days!!! I've been on the phone with AT&T and Apple all morning and no one can help or accept responsibility. I've been so frustrated with the huge increase in data usage in general with iOS 6 and now this is just out of control. I appreciate all of the suggestions here and will try them but agree there is a bigger underlying issue that isn't being acknowledged. I've been with AT&T for 10 years and have always had an iPhone (nothing jailbroken, etc) and this is just getting out of control. It is also happening with my husbands IP4S. I'm beyond frustrated right now!

There are probably many possible causes, as this has been going on for years. As unlikely as it seems, I wonder if the inclusion of a hidden radio option may be involved when the problem occurs for the first time with iOS 6.1? Maybe print the story and take it to the Apple store.  Ask for an engineer to examine the phone.

This has been a frustrating problem, been dealing with it ever since October when we switched to IOS6.  I have written a complaint against ATT with the FCC and written to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.  They are responsive but provide NO real solutions.

Am suggesting to the community to start making complaints to FCC against Apple and your carrier (if you live in USA). http://www.fcc.gov/complaints.  Wade through and do complaint online under "Billing, service, provacy "etc...you will have opportunity to provide written comment in your own words in the complaint form.