The new iPhone 15
signem's profile

Teacher

 • 

23 Messages

Monday, June 28th, 2010 1:01 PM

iphone 2am unauthorized data usage

Beginning on June 16, my original iphone began transmitting 2+MB of data "internet/MEdia Net" at 2 am every morning. Prior to this, my records show a daily data transmission at that time in the range of 8-50KB.

 

I changed to the 200MB plan when I upgraded to iphone 4 on June 24 and have begun monitoring data - that is how i discovered this escalation in data use. Both existing and new iphones are always on wi-fi at 2am. On 6/25, this 2am data usage jumped to 5MB, so I have switched off cell data altogether.

 

What is going on? At this rate, my iphone will use all 200MB of data in a month with these 2 am data uploads. I saw complaints about this on the Apple forum with no solution provided by ATT.

 

For 2 1/2 years, with my original iphone, I used an average of 30-50MB of data per month, so I was quite comfortable signing up for the 200MB plan. 

 

Is ATT going to fix this problem? 

 

Signe

Accepted Solution

Professor

 • 

2.4K Messages

13 years ago

 


@omimo wrote:

Also being told to put my phone in airplane mode, turn it off, etc. is infuriating. Why do I have to miss calls in order to avoid getting charged for data I don't want?

 


 

Why would you put the phone in airplane mode just to stop using cellular data?  That is just silly.

If you were on iPhone OS 3.x or older, I could understand it.

In iOS4.x, go to Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data and set it to OFF.

You can leave this off permanently, granted you will not be able to send/receive MMS messages or use Visual VoiceMail, but otherwise the phone works perfectly fine.

 

If/When you want to use cellular data, it is a very simple process to turn it back on.

 

 

 

 


@omimo wrote:
I can't expand the memory (a fairly typical thing) or attach a photo to an email I started (Duh, Jobs!).

 

To fix many things requires downgrading and jailbreaking in a way that I cannot do on this phone anyhow.

 

 


 

There has never been any expectation that one could expand the memory of the iPhone, that's why it comes in two capacities and you select the one you are willing to pay for.

 

As for attaching a photo to an email, you certainly can do that by copying and pasting the pic into the email.

 

Professor

 • 

1.7K Messages

14 years ago

There are several data transfers including for overnight:

 * Voicemail

 * Push Notifications

 * Push Email (except GMail at times)

 * MS Exchange (Yahoo, MobileMe, and GMail support these)

 * MMS and SMS ping

 * active applications (7 API types on apps including Background API, file transfer to complete, etc)

 

You can close active applications by double tapping home, holding an active app, and then pressing the stop icon to close it. To prevent any data transfer, swap to airplane mode. You can also keep data going by hooking up a wifi router and keeping wifi enabled while on airplane mode.

Guru

 • 

1K Messages

14 years ago

It may be a program you've downloaded from the app store. But, I think the real question here is, if it's hooked to wifi, why is it using cell data? Mine does it too, but I still have unlimited data, so I'm not real concerned.

Expert

 • 

12.2K Messages

14 years ago


@davidusr wrote:
It may be a program you've downloaded from the app store. But, I think the real question here is, if it's hooked to wifi, why is it using cell data? Mine does it too, but I still have unlimited data, so I'm not real concerned.

suspect that when the phone is in sleep mode the wifi is turned off, the cellular data network connection is required to be avtive even when the phone is off to be able to recieve phone calls, visual voicemail messages for the required. If it is an app, then the author needs to reevaluate how it sends and recieves data

Teacher

 • 

23 Messages

14 years ago

I don't have any applications other than what came on the iphone. It is connected to WIFI. And the big problem is that this is "data sent", not data received! I would understand if this were data received, but it is not. And, why this massive increase starting on June 16. I thought it was the switch to iphone4 on June 24 until I looked at the data usage and found it started on June 16, the day after I ordered the new iphone.

 

Signe

Expert

 • 

12.2K Messages

14 years ago


@signem wrote:

I don't have any applications other than what came on the iphone. It is connected to WIFI. And the big problem is that this is "data sent", not data received! I would understand if this were data received, but it is not. And, why this massive increase starting on June 16. I thought it was the switch to iphone4 on June 24 until I looked at the data usage and found it started on June 16, the day after I ordered the new iphone.

 

Signe


it would be cellular if the wifi is in sleep mode and it appears it does not wake up the wifi connection for this.

 

It appears to be some form of update, maybe it is sending usage updates, not sure, have had a Iphone for a couple of years and the data records that I can check back to have always had the upload around 1am in the morning, prior to that the other smartphones that I have had did the same thing. I put it off to the fact I push check exchange, gmail and my isp provider email addresses every 30 minutes

Teacher

 • 

23 Messages

14 years ago

I will check settings on my router to ensure that it is not sleeping. 

 

Regarding the 2 am uploads or 1am in your case, can you check and see if they increased exponentially in size on June 16? I am trying to get to the bottom of this - why they went from a few KB to several MB. 

 

If I do not manually turn off cell, I will exceed my 200MB data plan limit by the end of the month. 

Guru

 • 

1K Messages

14 years ago

He was referring to wifi on the phone, not your router. If the phone is sleeping, it will use cell network rather than wifi, which answers my question. Thanks Wingrider! I didn't realize, or think about, the phone using cell data while in sleep mode.

Teacher

 • 

23 Messages

14 years ago

Yes, I figured that out after looking at my router and it says that the iphone has been attached for 18 hours. I just changed autolock to "never" to see if this helps. 

 

I'm still looking for the reason that the data sent increased to several MB every night.

 

The other problem that I am consistently seeing is that my iphone will still rack up data even while it is attached to WIFI during the day. I'm assuming that this is because the phone is going to sleep.

 

But, even if that was going on before June 16, I never had the daily massive accumulation of data. My highest month was 50MB, but I was traveling and not connected to WIFI.

 

Has anyone from ATT chimed in here? I'm hoping that an ATT technical person can answer this question about the increase in data.

Tutor

 • 

8 Messages

14 years ago

so b4 putting it to sleep mode we should manually stop the cellular data?

Not finding what you're looking for?
New to AT&T Community?
New to the AT&T Community? Start by visiting the Community How-To.
New to the AT&T Community?
Visit the Community How-To.