Why do I have mysterious cellular data usage (Verizon) every 6 hours on all 3 of my iphone 5's?

mtamaki wrote:

Other questions from a while back in the disucssion -

1. Which way is the data going, push or pull?
2. Why does it use cellular data only and not wifi when it is within a strong wifi network? The 6 hour increment of data use does stop when you turn off cellular data.
3. What on the iPhone, even it were service oriented, requires that much data? Ideas may include documents, email, pictures, video, application data, facetime video and sound ... etc

1. No way to know which way it is going, unless you have an app such as Onavo. However, Settings/Cellular shows cumulatively how much data was sent and how much was received.

2. Being within a WiFi field is not sufficient. WiFi goes off 30 seconds after the screen goes off to save battery, so any data transfer when the screen is off will go over cellular. WiFi, unlike cellular, uses power continuously, whether transferring data or not. This is not an iPhone characteristic; it is the nature of the WiFi standard. But it means that if WiFi stayed on all the time the battery would run down very fast. The exception is when the phone is connected to power. Then WiFi stays on.

3. Settings/Cellular will show you how much data each app uses, but not what the app is using it for. You can turn off individual apps to prevent them from using cellular data. If you take frequent screen shots of that page you can sort of graph your data usage for each app over time.

Regarding the 6 hours, it's more complicated than I implied. (I've worked on telecom billing systems). Whenever you leave one area covered by a Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO) that switch sends a single record to the billing system showing all of the data you used while connected to the switch. These occur at random times. (An MTSO can support many towers, so it is a larger scale than simply a tower). The systems I worked on also had a "close" function at the end of the day that sent a single billing record from the MTSO you are connected to at the close time, which is roughly midnight PST for AT&T. This is so if you stay home for several days you get a summary record each day rather that one after multiple days. Many other carriers around the world use the same billing system.

Verizon uses a different billing system. I'm guessing here, because I never worked on Verizon's system, but since the 6 hour interval is so consistent I suspect that Verizon's MTSOs send the summary record from the MTSO you have been connected to every 6 hours rather than every 24 hours. The reason you see other usage in between is due to the fact that as you travel when you leave the coverage area of an MTSO a summary is generated also. And sometimes you can even switch MTSOs without moving; for example, if your local switch is overloaded you might be transferred to another nearby switch. This is especially common in large cities, where a switch may cover only a few blocks, as opposed to a rural network when the switches can be 15 miles apart.

On a historical note, when AT&T and Apple released the first iPhone a billing record was generated for every data transfer. This resulted in users getting bills of 300 or more pages, listing every transfer. Also, since the record only reported in kilobyte chunks, a 100 byte transfer would be reported as 1 KB. As data was unlimited for the first iPhone this usage inflation on the bill was not a problem for the customer, but it did make people wonder where all that information was going.

there are these charges every 6 hours for DAYS when there's no other data usage on the phone -- that doesn't make sense. And I agree with you -- if it's the carrier pulling the information for their billing purposes, we shouldn't be billed for it.

BUT, I don't believe it's really them pulling it for billing purposes -- that information should be available from those expensive cell towers they built -- there's some "polling" issue going on here.

Nope, that's not it -- there are numerous incidents of data usage between these 6 hour time periods on several of the phones. It's only the phones with low data usage that it's so easy to see between the six hour intervals. But on the line with a lot of data usage, those every six hour postings are still there, you just have to look for them.

I've noticed this on my Verizon iPhone 5s, I upgraded from a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S2. The 5s is having the 6 hour increments. Verizon suggested that keeping the screen from going to sleep, or turning off the cellular data until needed. Both of which are NOT viable solutions to the problem. I stopped by our IT department and talked with a few of the Apple passionate individuals, they said they've heard about this problem and to try turning off background app refresh. I did this, and although the mysterious 1:38am cellular data use is still present, in one night it dropped from 20-30MB to 1.75MB.

Not really the best fix since with the GS2 I'm used to using about 1.79GB/month with periodic music streaming, video streaming, etc. Now with the 5s I'm really skitish to use data for anything and I'm still going over my 2GB/month. It's a feeling that I'm truly not paying for data I'm in control of.

http://www.besttechie.com/2013/10/06/new-ios-7-feature-cause-data-usage-to-spike -heres-how-to-fix-it/

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5364520?tstart=0

I have the same issue. I see mysterious data logs every 6 hours on my phone, even though I was at home all day using my wifi. Its the same times everyday - 2:48am, 8:48am, 2:48pm, 8:48pm, 2:48am. Very strange. I'll talk to the genius bar too and let you know what I find out.

With iOS 7, apps can continue processing in the background, so it's important to close them when not using them. All it takes is one app to perfrom background communications with some server at fixed intervals.

Try shutting down one device, then start it again but do not invoke any apps. Is there still communications going on? (There will be some, since iOS would be doing it.)

My family is experiencing the exact same issue. Three phones, two 5cs and one 5s, all with this weird cellular data usage at 6 hour intervals that seem to reset periodically (eg when the phone is turned off then back on). We are also Verizon customers, and of course they claim they have never heard of it. The usage was so high because of this on one of our phones it actually exceeded our data plan. And in each case, this behavior began when we upgraded our phones to the new 5 versions. We had all been using iOS7 on our old 4 and 4s. What makes this even more intriguing is that two of us migrated our settings from our backed up iPhone 4 phones. No new apps and no setting changes.

It would be really nice to know if any users from other cellular carriers are experiencing this as well. We will be turning app cellular access off on one of the phones to see if it changes...

Sounds like the polling interval for VZ's billing servers. (Sprint pulls the usage data every 15 minutes)

Use an app that can track your data usage (OpenSignal, Dataman, etc.) they should show the same usage as what's on your VZ account.

Technically, the app should reflect the same as what Verizon shows... just that the usage updates may be delayed by VZ.

If there is a stark difference in usage, call verizon and ask about the usage stats.

Use the power of iOS 7 and see what apps are using the most data. (Settings > Cellular > *scroll down*)

No one from Apple works here... it's all volunteers

I quote myself:

Use the power of iOS 7 and see what apps are using the most data. (Settings > Cellular > *scroll down*)

I asked you to check that for a reason, help us help you identify apps that use the most data in a given time period.

Include a screenshot of the app data usage in your reply.

Thus far I have tried the following:

1) On the 5s, I turned off the auto send for the diagnostics and usage. This disrupted the 6 hour pattern, but it seems to have resumed.

2) On one 5c, I turned off the cellular entirely. This actually did the trick. 24 hours with only a single .3KB transfer in the morning yesterday (yes, still connected to wifi).

3) On the second 5c, I am planning to leave it alone.

None of these phones have Songja. In fact, they have little in common outside of the standard apps provided by Apple and Facebook. But given the fact that mtamaki has a fresh out of the box device with only standard apps, what ever this is must come from the standard configuration in iOS7, but is not related to the diagnostics and usage updates.

Chattphotos, I have spent some time trying to look at the cellular usage to determine which one is generating the signal, unfortunately the phone had to be removed from the wifi environment to do this and expected signals obscured the unexpected. Data is logged across all, and you cannot see the "when" in this function so it is difficult to tell who the culpret is when expected data transfer is ocurring over this repeating signal. Moving forward, I will be turning all the cellular off on each app except one, and I will wait 24 hours to see if the activated one picks up the pattern. GIven what has been reported already, I will start with the OOB apps.