Need your talk or text logs?
kenzomorlino's profile

Tutor

 • 

4 Messages

Friday, October 17th, 2014 3:10 AM

Data Usage Count

Hello, would like to know some info about this. Why does the AT&T usage online show inaccurate data? I know there are delays in reporting but I have compared it to my iPhone via the cellular usage counter and it doesnt even match. It's off by a certain amount of MB every time. So data for AT&T is ahead in reporting? I always reset my statistics every month at 12 AM when my cycle restarts. Also compared with a third party data counter and also doesn't match. I for sure know the iPhone counter is very accurate. I know other people may have the same issue but this info needs to be accurate and needs a fix. Thanks.

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Master

 • 

4.1K Messages

9 years ago


@kenzomorlino wrote:
Hello, would like to know some info about this. Why does the AT&T usage online show inaccurate data? I know there are delays in reporting but I have compared it to my iPhone via the cellular usage counter and it doesnt even match. It's off by a certain amount of MB every time. So data for AT&T is ahead in reporting? I always reset my statistics every month at 12 AM when my cycle restarts. Also compared with a third party data counter and also doesn't match. I for sure know the iPhone counter is very accurate. I know other people may have the same issue but this info needs to be accurate and needs a fix. Thanks.

There are delays in data reporting, as youhave indicated that you already know.  That means you may have data usage from your previous month that doesn't appear on your bill until you cycle forward into a new month.  As I've said before, for this reason you will almost never match what your phone reports to what AT&T reports.  In general, they should be fairly close, but they will almost never match exactly.

 

When you look at third party apps you have a crap shoot as to how accurate they are.  Since Apple doesn't allow third party apps to have access to the low level information, no third party app can accurately measure your true data usage.  Some can get close by setting your phone to use their server as a proxy so all data traffic you use should go through their servers, but even then, they might not capture all traffic.  Even if they did manage to gather all traffice, you still run into the issues with reporting delays, and such.

 

I hadn't reset my iPhone 5's cellular data counters for about 12 months and I looked at the totals it reported.  My iPhone reported that for 12 months I had used just over 17GB download, and about 2GB in outbound traffic.  I then looked at my AT&T cellular bills for that period and summed up my data usage which came to about 19.2GB.  By looking over the 12 month period, I was able to see that AT&T and my iPhone essentially matched for what they both claimed my data usage was.  I would say that this is a good indication that AT&T is reporting data usage fairly accurately (but not necessarily timely).  If AT&T were over-charging, then over the period of 12 months, they would have reported a very much higher usage amount.

Tutor

 • 

4 Messages

9 years ago

Okay, thanks so much for your information! 👍

ACE - Expert

 • 

64.7K Messages

9 years ago

If you happen to live in an area where you are always on the ATT network and not likely to "data roam", data reporting should be fairly quick. So, try this one month. Turn off cellular data and reset the phone stats at least 24 hours before the end of your cycle, if you can turn if off even earlier, that would be better. This should allow all data used in that billing cycle to get reported. Now in the new billing cycle, your phone and ATT's usage should be much closer and theoretically, ATT's usage should be equal to or lower than what your phone is reporting.

Teacher

 • 

16 Messages

9 years ago

I use a wireless hotspot for my work PC to VPN into the office. This PC is the only machine I connect to my hotspot. I turned on metered data for my wireless NIC on my Windows 8 PC on the first day of my new billing cycle. The metered data says that I have used 534MB of data so far but AT&T says that I have used 2.6 GB in this billing cycle on this one device. I expect some discrepancy but this is a little ridiculous. There is no way I have used 2.6 GB of data on this device. At this rate, 1 1/2 days into a billing cycle, I will use 40 GB on just this one device. 

Contributor

 • 

1 Message

9 years ago

I just switched from Verizon to ATT and my MiFi card on Verizon I rarely went over 3GB and only used the MiFi card when on business travel. I used my ATT MiFi card on one business to check email and web browsing and used up 2.45GB of data. No videos, audio or large file download and my activity was the same when on Verizon. There is something wrong here and when I called ATT they could not give any answer. Kinda wish I stayed with Verizon.

Contributor

 • 

2 Messages

8 years ago

AT&T consistently reports my data usage to be at least .2 gigs higher that my phone does. And then I'm never able to use the full 6 gigs that I'm paying for because of the threat that I could go over and charged 15 dollars for 1 additional gigabyte of data. In reality I probably only get 5.5 gigs (Im being generous) for the 6 gigs that I pay an arm and a leg for. AT&T is getting away with cheating their customers plain and simple and I'm tired of being their victim.

ACE - Sage

 • 

116.6K Messages

8 years ago

@CollierT

 

If you are a Mobile Share customer, this complaint doesn't hold much water.  If you only use 5…5 of 6 GB, then you have 6.5 to use the next month due to roll over data.

 

If you aren't on the Mobile Share plan, you may be paying less than current market price for your data plan.  

 

 

Contributor

 • 

2 Messages

8 years ago

Not true because I can't use that full 6.5 gigs or I could get charged $15 for going over.  So what happens to that extra data that I don't use then? It expires.  If I were to add up all the data that I was not able to use over an entire year I'm sure it would add up to at least an entire gigabyte.

Contributor

 • 

1 Message

8 years ago

Ok I use the att app and go to check my usage and to see usage detail I have to go to the full site . When u click on usage detail text/data another window pops up says getting next set of records when the details pop up it will only let you see a few, it doesn't scroll down to see the whole page of details. Why is this happening?

Contributor

 • 

2 Messages

8 years ago

Does using wi-fi for Internet use much data? What about sending pictures, or checking the weather? I barely use much but shows data usage rapidly increasing. 

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.