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

I'm also baffled, at my work I've engaged both our Verizon Account Manager, and Apple Account Manager so rather than being the middle man between their finger pointing, I'm going to see if they can get on a call or whatever they need to do to get an answer for me. I understand what Finch is saying, but I'm not entirely convinced. The Galaxy phone I previously had always stayed under 2GB and I used it without worrying about data usage, now with the iPhone 5s I'm worried to ever use cellular data and it's always almost at 2GB. Something's not adding up.

Alright, I've ran internal reports on the approximately 1000 lines of service my company has, and there is definitely a pattern to the data usage on iPhone 5, and later. There is no 6 hour to the minute pattern on iPhone 4, 4s, or Galaxy phones that I see in the sample I've taken thus far, but on every iPhone 5, 5c, and 5s there has been the 6 hour pattern.

I sent this data to our Verizon Account Manager who agreed to have one of their Network Engineer's look at this and to HOPEFULLY help find a reason and a fix. As of today the pattern continues, turning off the background app refresh, and turning automatic diagnostic send did not work.

I think you might be on to something there. I've been looking at many of the other forums regarding this 6 hour data topic and that's come up, so maybe it's related to the LTE. To me, I would just like an answer from Verizon or Apple that actually makes sense from one of their engineer's that can really understand and see the problem on their end. Hoping to hear something from them early next week.

To add some additional data to the topic; I have an iPhone 5, a 5c, a 4s and an HTC One all on AT&T. The data pulls occur on each line every three hours on the dot (12:00AM, 3:00AM, 6:00AM, etc.). The 4s has the most data at around 5GB in a month, followed by the 5 with about 1GB, then the 5c at 300MB then the One at 70MB. All iPhones are using the most current iOS. This combined with the info throughout this string suggests to me that - as stated by others throughout this string - the time for the data usage as shown on carrier billing is not when the data usage occurred but merely when the usage info was transmitted to the carrier. If the data was being used every three hours on the dot I'd be more concerned that there was some hidden, data-swiping process going on.

That said, I've not been able to identify why the 4s is using nearly 5GB a month when it's almost always on Wifi when being actively used and that seems like too much data for background refresh and pushed data. It's the only one using iCloud backup, but that isn't supposed to occur unless connected to Wifi.

I'm not convinced it's a billing time. Over the past few days I've tried a few things while I have some folks at Verizon looking into this. The most telling thing is that I haven't consciously used less cellular data over the past few days, BUT I kept it off, and only turned it on when I wanted to use cellular data. Again, I want to stress that through my daily routine I have used cellular data at the same times while doing this, and only turning cellular data on when needed. I've found that before turning off cellular data and only turning it on when I would normally use it (always on), pre-test it was using 102.94MB on average per day.... post-test (turning on when wanting to use) the average cellular data per day has dropped to 15.16MB per day, and the 6 hour increment has no longer been occuring....

In my circumstance I am convinced that it's billing time because according to the carrier report the data usage occurs only on the hour every three hours when I'm using data throughout the day. If you've turned off data over cellular that might suspend or otherwise alter the timing of the six hour increments and reduced data used for background refreshing and email push.

adamejones wrote:

To add some additional data to the topic; I have an iPhone 5, a 5c, a 4s and an HTC One all on AT&T. The data pulls occur on each line every three hours on the dot (12:00AM, 3:00AM, 6:00AM, etc.).

If you view your current usage online at AT&T.com, it shows totals every 3 hours.

If you view past billed usage, it is broken out.

The bill reporting cycle is independent of the amount of data you use. You would use (and be billed for) the same amount of data if the bill reporting interval was 5 minutes, an hour, 3 hours or 6 hours (or 24 hours, for that matter). Or even the way it worked on 2007, where every data transfer appeared on the bill, resulting in 100 page bills.

To find out how much data you use and which apps are using it go to Settings/Cellular. That will show your total usage since the last reset, as well has how much data is used by each app individually. Reset the statistics at the start of your billing cycle. Then the usage shown on the phone should agree with what is shown on the carrier's web site or bill. If they are not close then there is a problem with the carrier. If they agree then you really are using that much data. And the phone can tell you exactly what it is being used for.

Turning off cellular data some of the time will reduce your data usage, but not for the reason you are probably thinking. When the phone is asleep WiFi is turned off to save the battery, so any data usage by background apps will use cellular data. If you turn off cellular data, when you turn it back on the phone will not be asleep (because you have to wake it to turn cellular data on) so all of the queued data requests will be processed while the phone is awake and thus about to use WiFi.

The other option is to go to Settings/General/Background App Refresh and turn it off or turn off apps that use a lot of data.

Response from Verizon's Network Engineer...

From what I’m seeing in the records it appears that if the device stays in 4GLTE coverage continuously for 6 hours straight the network initiates a disconnect and reconnect. It also appears that this is when the cumulative data usage for the past 6 hours is rolled up and posted to the billing system.

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Not really the answer I wanted, it still seems crazy that most of my data since I received my phone has been used during this 6 hour period. I put my phone into 3G and the data is significantly reduced and no 6 hour incremental data use. I guess that's where I'll keep my phone, out of LTE so my data isn't chewed away like that. Either that, or only turning cellular data on when needed which isn't ideal either.

Stumbled on this thread after getting data usage warnings. At first I assumed that my wife or I had simply done too much video stuff, but then I noticed this same 6 hour pattern which is mentioned by many people on the thread - We have two Iphone 5 units with verizon. In reading the whole thread it now seems clear that both Lawrence Finch and the Network Engineer who responded to **** have essentially confirmed that the interval is to due a setting on the Verizon system, as opposed to something on the phone like an App that polls every six hours.

However one piece of data counters the specific assertion by the engineer that after staying in continuous LTE for 6 hours, it disconnects and reconnects and that is when data usage is rolled up. If that were strictly the case, we would not see what people have posted from the verizon data usage area showing logs of data usage in between these 6 hour intervals as well. This distinction may not fundamentally change the nature of trying to figure out what the data is, but it means we still do not know what data gets rolled up at six hour intervals and what data gets logged separately.

Let's pretend/assume for a moment that there is nothing insidious or nefarious and that the timing of the logged records of data usage on the verizon site is something based on a combination of technical and other factors we won't ever get full technical details on. We KNOW that if we have Background App Refresh on that our phone is going to be using data at unpredictable intervals, so we shouldn't worry about the fact that we can't tie Verizon usage records directly to activity which represented us interacting with the phone. This icnludes apps like weather and stocks which are part of the default in the box setup, so we'll see usage even with nothing but defaults. If we want our phone to not send and receive data except when we initiate it, we have to turn off background app refresh and possibly change the Fetch settings and some other settings. That's the nature of the beast.

The larger concern is usage. I don't care if I use an extra 50MB a month on things I can't understand or track. I do care if it's an extra 1 GB. So Lawrence Finch has been correct all along that the main thing to do here is figure out which apps are using significant amounts of data. The six hour interval isn't really critical to this other than it illustrates that Verizon data usage logs are not real time, so we need to take that into account when comparing them with phone usage logs. What he suggested makes sense - either disable as much as possible and then add back bit by bit and see what causes high usage, or clear usage history and then check it at short intervals to determine specifically what uses a lot of data. And compare this data from the phone for short intervals to the verizon data usage information -obviously we've learned that we'll need at least a six hour interval to get reliable comparisons.

So that's what I'll be trying. I haven't reset my usage since March, so I can clearly see right now that youtube and safari represent 90% of my data usage. The odd thing is that I had a 250MB usage record today even though my wife and I both stopped using youtube and safari after discovering we were at 75% usage two days ago. So no idea what to think, but at this point we don't have specific enough data to be able to say definitively that Verizon's charging us for something we didn't do. If we find say a 2 day period with 20MB usage logged on the phone and 100MB logged on verizon, then we'll know.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with this issue! It is happening with my daughter's iPhone 5s, and not my iPhone 5. We weren't aware until we got a notification that our data was used up for the month. I called Verizon about the "every 6 hours" issue. We tried resetting a few things, and he "thought" it was the Minecraft app that she had on her phone. Well, obviously this wasn't the case since it is still happening! I'm kind of annoyed that this is happening and I'm having to pay for more data than we really actually use because of this mysterious problem. I've gone through all of the posts and turned things off to see what happens. I want her to be able to USE her phone when not in the house connected to wi-fi. I guess I'll be on the phone with Verizon again complaining.