iMessages removed from AT&T usage report....why???

Mine always showed until just recently. Seems pretty ironic if you guys are saying it never happened.

They are not supposed to show. When you use iMessage, that uses data through Apple's servers which AT&T has no control or knowledge of. 

If they showed on your billed, they were not iMessages but regular texts that went though AT&T's servers.That is the only way they would show on your bills.

Does this also mean if I have a number blocked on my son's phone number, he can still iMessage. If so, what a P O S service ATT has roped us into. I guess this also negates the parental controls as well? Why charge for them then?

With the newer AT&T plans including free SMS in the plans, I don't see why so many people are even using iMessage to move the (free) SMS messages over to the (paid) data usage iMessage. You can just turn-off iMessage on the Apple devices, and now all messages are forced through SMS and will show on the cell bill. Yes, it will prevent your kids from communicating with their friends who don't have cell phones and only have the free Apple messaging service, but it also achieves the desired results of seeing all message sending/receiving log on the phone bill.

 

Hello @leagurl 

 

iMessage messages don't show up on the bill. iMessage system uses data and AT&T doesn't track them. If messaging logs are important to you, I recommend turning iMessage feature off.

 

Thank you,

Dmitriy

iMessage uses your phone's data connection. That data connection may be cellular data, or it may be wifi. It doesn't matter to the application how the data connection is provided, just that it has a data connection to the internet.

Now, a few facts about iMessage. When an iPhone user enables iMessage, and sends messages to non-iphone customers, or iPhone customers who have not enabled iMessage, those messages "fall back" to send as SMS, so they will appear on the monthly bill. If an iPhone user sends a message to another iPhoen user who has iMessage enabled, but there are connection errors, the message will fall-back to SMS (unless explicitly disabled in the settings). Those messages also appear on the itemized bill showing the phone number the message was sent to/received from. In all of these cases, the mesage bubble on the iPhone should show as green, indicating that the message was sent/received using SMS.

In the "normal" iMessage usage (iPhone to iPhone), the message bubble appears in blue, and the message uses the data connection (wifi, cellular, whatever). For these messages, the AT&T bill does not itemize the messages and does not list the remote phone number (because not all remote devices are phones so they may not have a phone number). This usage will be grouped into the summarized data usage (that is rolled-up into 3 hour increments for Mobile Share users). AT&T has no way of knowing who the remote message was sent to/from so they can't itemize it on your bill, nor can they offer any kind of filtering of that usage, other than disabling all cellular data, because to AT&T that's all it is.