Is wifi assist burning cellular data?

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Level 1

8 points

Is wifi assist burning cellular data?

I have an iPhone 7 on Verizon with a 2GB plan. Both home and work have Wifi, so I rarely use even 1GB in a month. However, for the past 3 months, I have exceeded 2GB, including reaching it in two weeks in the latest month. Cellular data info in my bill indicates it overwhelmingly web traffic contributing to the usage. I do not believe how I use the phone has changed dramatically. I spoke with Verizon and the technician immediately advised me to turn off Wifi assist, which has been active on my phone for long before this problem occurred. Also, in settings, beneath Wifi assist, it says 122MB, which to me means that Wifi assist has only contributed 122MB to my cellular usage, which is obviously very little.

So my question is: is there something I'm missing here? Could Wifi assist really contribute to my problem, despite the 122MB indication? And if not, what could be causing this? Here's another tidbit: I last reset the statistics in my cellular page in settings in September 2013. In the 4 1/2 years the data has been collecting, it says I've used a total of 44GB. How the heck am I suddenly using 2GB/month?

iPhone 7, iOS 11.2.6, null

Posted on Mar 1, 2018 5:30 PM

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Answer 1

sberman

Level 10

264,201 points

Mar 1, 2018 6:01 PM in response to chundered

I believe you are correct in assessing your Wi-Fi Assist use of cellular data as being trivial (122MB). It makes no sense for Verizon to charge you for Wi-Fi data which is not provided by Verizon.

I recommend that you now reset the statistics on your cellular usage and see how that use compares to what Verizon claims.

Of course, I assume your iPhone is the only device on your Verizon cellular data account. If not, that may well explain what you're seeing.

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Answer 2

Mar 1, 2018 6:08 PM in response to chundered

If your Wi-Fi signal is weak then Wi-Fi Assist will route your traffic over cellular, so I would definitely turn that off if you have a 2 GB data cap (regardless of the indicated usage). I'd also suggest you check to see what app is using the most data (Settings/ Cellular). You may also want to set a reminder to reset your cellular usage statistics on the 1st day of your plan cycle to monitor this activity.

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Answer 3

KiltedTim

Level 10

195,933 points

Mar 1, 2018 6:09 PM in response to chundered

Verizon's interpretation of "web traffic" being what's using your cellular data is undoubtedly misleading to say the least.

All that means is that it's http or https traffic. Many apps use https for their data connections. In that sense, it is technically 'web traffic', but you're not going to see that usage for the browser.

Follow sberman's advice to see what's actually using the data...

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Answer 4

chundered Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 1, 2018 8:15 PM in response to chundered

Thanks for the input. I do intend to reset my statistics when my billing period rolls over in a few days. It is not the only device on the account but the data usage info Verizon provides indicates the majority of data usage is from my phone. That makes sense as my wife does not use her phone as much as I do.

I'll see where the statistics lead me. I may try and get more detailed info from Verizon but don't know if it's available. If I could get a look at specific times of high cellular data use, I might be able to figure out if I'm just suddenly using it more than in the past (I still think that isn't likely). And I have the Wifi assist turned off. I still don't think that's the problem but if it is, it might be easy to suss out if the next month drops back down in cellular usage.

Thanks again.

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Is wifi assist burning cellular data?

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