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12Chris34's profile

Scholar

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194 Messages

Sunday, January 19th, 2014 7:25 PM

WiFi at home counts against data usage?

So I get these letters from AT&T trying to sound like the best deal in the world. In itty bitty text on the back, "Wi-Fi usage at home counts toward your high speed Internet service usage data plan. Additional charges may apply for usage in excess of your data plan."

 

You mean I can use Wi-Fi anywhere outside my own home unlimited, for free, but if I or anyone else use it in my own home it counts against my data plan (which is the minimal 200 Mb)?

Master

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5.1K Messages

10 years ago

Wi-Fi usage at home or anywhere else does not count toward your cellphone monthly data allowance. 

Guru

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450 Messages

10 years ago

Hi 12Chris34,

 

What you might be reading is that when you use WiFi at home, your data usage goes against your plan at home, which may be subjected to a data cap (some home providers have caps). 

 

When you are connected to WiFi your cell phone data plan is not affected. In many cases your phone will require to connect to WiFi to download certian updates. 

Former Employee

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636 Messages

10 years ago

Hey,

Short answer, if you're not using AT&T's celluar internet, it's not counting against you.

Your home wifi is like an radio station for connecting your dsl/cable/fiber, to nearby devices. When your phone is connected to that, it's using your dsl/cable/fiber and not AT&T's cellular. Now my personal home internet has a 300gb cap, so what I share with my phone counts towards that instead of AT&T's cell phone plan.

 

While it's true that using your phone on wifi at home doesnt count against your cellular plan, That's not the full story. Your phone, for several different reason may stop connecting to wifi. When that happens of course it defaults back to AT&T. If you want to keep track, get a free app 'My Data Manager'

 

eg. iPhones will often turn off wifi while 'sleeping' (screen is black), to save power.

Routers that are having issues, will sometimes kick devices off.

 

It's not the easiest thing to research, but the app will help.

-Alex

Guru

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552 Messages

10 years ago

If you have an Iphone you may get billed by ATT for data even if you're connected to WiFi. It's a software bug they never fixed. A glance through the forums will show lots of people complaining about it.
There will be posters after me saying that it's not ATT's fault or some other excuse. Bottom line is whatever the reason, if you connect an Iphone you should be prepared for issues.

Expert

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12.2K Messages

10 years ago


@harryspar wrote:
If you have an Iphone you may get billed by ATT for data even if you're connected to WiFi. It's a software bug they never fixed. A glance through the forums will show lots of people complaining about it.
There will be posters after me saying that it's not ATT's fault or some other excuse. Bottom line is whatever the reason, if you connect an Iphone you should be prepared for issues.

A "bug" that has been there since Apple released IOS 5, seems more like a Apple introduced feature

Guru

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552 Messages

10 years ago

Apple.

1 Attachment

Contributor

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1 Message

10 years ago

So how do you get out of paying the data overage fees that AT&T is charging me every month? I call and they say that I have to pay because I go over but every month I get the overage notifications while I am inside my house connected to my wifi!!! Help! What can I do???

Expert

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12.2K Messages

10 years ago


@Princesselena22 wrote:
So how do you get out of paying the data overage fees that AT&T is charging me every month? I call and they say that I have to pay because I go over but every month I get the overage notifications while I am inside my house connected to my wifi!!! Help! What can I do???

the wifi connection will drop when the phone goe into hibernate mode, a wifi connection is not required for the basic use of the phone so to conserver battery the manufacturer of the device turns it off. If you want to prevent it from automaticly utilizing the celular data go into settings and turn off celullar data if it is a option ony tour device

Teacher

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14 Messages

10 years ago

Do what I do turn of ur cellular data under settings. This will ensure you use wifi only. Turn it on when you want to use cellular data. Also text messaging will not work between Iphones with out dara unless you send it as a standard text message.

Contributor

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1 Message

10 years ago

We just switched to AT&T 2 weeks ago and after no difference in our data use found that we have already used 9GB of data. I just got done chatting with 3 AT&T reps and they all said the same thing. Even if you are connected to WI-FI you are still using mobile data unless you manually uncheck mobile data in your settings. At this time there is no automatic setting for this and it is up to you to remember to do it. In addition, the newest Android OS update eliminated the mobile data quick toggle to make things even more difficult for customers. No where does it state any of this. They also all immediately suggested I needed to check my apps running in the background and to increase my data plan. No thanks, I will just uncheck my mobile data button until I can find another solution.

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