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

Seeing similar on our family's Verizon LTE phones iPhone 5 and 5S as well as a MotoX Android. But not seeing it on iPhone 4S which is 3G. More evidence for LTE as a cause.

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 Reet 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.

I also have this same thing happening on both my iPhone and iPad, what confuses me is that even when on wireless (which is 90% of the time) I still get these data charges every three hours?

stlusch wrote:

I also have this same thing happening on both my iPhone and iPad, what confuses me is that even when on wireless (which is 90% of the time)

Do you mean wifi?

Wireless usually means having a cellular data connection., not wifi.

Yes you are correct, I do mean when on wifi

Just because you are on wifi does not mean you are not using cellular data.

Here's the problem: Data Plan w/ AT&T and Verizon. I am just fed up with having to watch how much data i (and the rest of my family) am using and what is available before billing cycle ends. Once my contract ends with Verizon, I will be looking for Unlimited Data (Sprint). Trust me guys, its not your phones. My son has an iPhone 4 and I have an HTC Android (everything above applies).

I am convinced that the main culprit is the Background App Refresh. With a little experimenting I went from a mysterious 300+mb usage a day (broken up into the previously stated 6 hour download increments) to approximately 30mb a day, the reduction was linked to turning off the Background App Refresh. Try it, so far it has helped by diminishing my mysterious data usage.

Thanks davec2014. This has resolved the problem for me as well.

I believe I have the same issue with AT&T. 2 of the users on my plan just upgraded to iPhone 5 S and the data usage on these phones increased dramatically. Both had the Background App Refresh on for Face Book, Snap Chat, and Instagram activated and both show the huge data uses at regular intervals even when the phones were connected to wifi. The users turned this Background App Refresh off today so I'll look at the usage tomorrow to verify the reduction of the data usage.

I have been using a mobile broadband modem since 2010 and I have never figured out what's using my data plan. Apparently Apple Mail and iCloud are big contributors. I have Mail, Calendar, and Notes using iCloud so my iPhone 4 will sync. I've noticed that a lot of the excessive usage is uplink, not downlink as I had expected. Facebook is a data hog as well. I'm struggling to stay within a 16GB data plan and I don't stream movies or music, I don't play games, and I haven't updated anything in months. I do keep the firewall enabled on my computer, phone, and mobile broadband modem. I would love to hear something from Apple about this.

Same issue with my two phones.

According to Verizon, I used 5.66GB for which the mysterious data represents 81.1%.

I smell a class action.

Verizon has really good lawyers so good luck with suing them. Are you stepping up first and starting it?