Scholar
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194 Messages
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)?
FormerWillyb
Mentor
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89 Messages
10 years ago
Eileen, what you say makes sense, but the logs seem to contradict that. I get--on two iPhones--at least 300-600kb of data usage each recorded all through the night while sleeping and our phones are connected to home wifi. Yesterday, there was 2.1MB of data usage between 3am and 6am on one phone, and 1MB on the other, while we were asleep. In rare situations where we need to reduce battery usage, we might turn off wifi, but otherwise, wifi is always on, for both of our phones at home and work, yet we show data usage 24 hours a day. With our new 1GB plan, this could become a problem.
I have turned off cellular data for most apps. The biggest user, though, is System Services, and that includes connections to a Microsoft Exchange server for mail. It would be a nice feature for the iPhone system settings to have an option that can automatically "Turn off cellular data when connected to wifi". We could go into settings and turn off cellular data every night, turn it on in the morning, turn it off when we get to work, turn it on when leaving work, but that seems like it should be unnecessary.
Moderator: Apologies for responding to two messages on this matter. I first responded to an April message, but it turned out to be April 2013, so I looked back for a 2014. I'm not a troll. It is worth noting, though, that it seems that many people may be getting charged for data they are not intentionally using, and this has been happening for a long time.
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FormerWillyb
Mentor
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89 Messages
10 years ago
Just got off the phone with tech support. Lisa confirmed pretty much all I've read here. She said...
Having to manually turn on/off data is going to be a big pain, and my wife and I are probably going to forget most of the time. According to the bar graph on my account summary page, we've used 20% of our 1GB already, after only two days on the new plan, and we've been at home or work all day and all night, except for commuting and the supermarket. At this rate, we'll exceed our former monthly average use in just a week or so, and we'll be into the next GB (and $15 addl charge) within two weeks.
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LogeoX
Tutor
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4 Messages
10 years ago
I can confirm a few things. As a new user going from unlimited to a 1GB plan...Ive seen some things that concertn me.
First being that I had so much usage while i was asleep. So I changed a few things.
I can confirm that while on wifi it does seem to be using data in some fashion. I experienced this while restoring my phone and downloading all my apps. There should have been no reason for me to have 3.5mb of data usage while on wifi. So it does seem to be dropping wifi when the phone screen sleeps but is still working in the background.
The data usage at 6am seems to be the case as well. I have started cuttting off Cellular usage while im on wifi and it have fixed any unknow data consumption on my phones part.
I do still see one trend that concerns me. I have cut off data from just about every esssential app in the Cellular usage. One of those being MUSIC app. Now I dont have all my music downloaded to my phone but I am showing links to all my music in the app. This means that I can stream those songs that are not downloaded to the phone when I have some type of internet access. Since I have cellular access disabled for the MUSIC app it should not stream any songs while using Celluar data. This DOES NOT seem to be the case. I did confirm that while using cellular data with no wifi around it still streams the music. This concerns me on the false sense of control the app is giving us.
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JPopNC
Contributor
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1 Message
9 years ago
I realize this is an old post and MAYBE they didn't charge for data used across home WAN back then, but AT&T absolutely DOES now. I work from home and rarely use wireless data outside the home, but I have twice been been charged for overages. When I call to explain their 'fix' is to manually go into settings to turn off Mobile Data. I explained in this year/time the phone should automatically be able to distinguish a home network is available.
DO NOT BE DECEIVED! This is a major issue.
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formerlyknownas
ACE - Sage
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117.2K Messages
9 years ago
This isn't normal. You may have a device issue. Please address via your warranty if possible.
I have 5 phones and 2 tablets in 3 separate households, and therefore on 3 different wifi services. None of them show excessive usage and we are rarely hitting 5-7 GBS a month.
We can't blame one platform or the other either. 2 phones are Android, 3 are Apple, one iPad and one Samsung tablet.
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sandblaster
ACE - Expert
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64.7K Messages
9 years ago
No, ATT does not charge for wifi data. You are right, though, that phones are able to distinguish when a home network is available. I don't know if any particular phone does this or not but phones are also smart enough to use the fastest data path, which thanks to LTE could be the cellular network. They are also smart enough to use both wifi and cellular at the same time. Again, I don't know if any phone OS's do this or not but it is certainly possible.
However, the most likely reason for your phone using cellular data instead of wifi is because it is not actually connected to wifi when you think it is. Most phones will shut the wifi radio off to conserve the battery when the phone is in "sleep" mode, however, there may still be applications on the phone using data. In some cases their are apps that will use cellular data even when you are on wifi. On my iphone, one of the biggest users of cellular data is location services.
Now depending on your phone, you may be able to set which apps are allowed to use cellular data and which aren't but as the ATT reps told you, the only way to absolutely ensure your phone does not use cellular data is to turn cellular data off.
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mrlerch
Tutor
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9 Messages
8 years ago
So here is something really interesting. Spoke to Apple, and their stance is that if you are using Wi-Fi on your iphone, then you shouldn't get billed LTE data. However do make sure you have the following feature disabled!
Wi-Fi Assist
To turn off Wi-Fi assist please go in your iPhone to:
Settings -> Cellular -> scroll all the way to the very bottom. Keep scrolling.. all the way down the very long apps list (in my case)
Then turn off Wi-Fi assist!
Nice intuitive spot! Thanks Apple and AT&T!!!!!!!!!
What Wi-Fi assist does is when your Wi-Fi connection is slow or bad it will use your LTE connection, even though wifi is turned on, to give you "a better (and more expensive) experience"!
Some other good practice should be to turn off certainl apps that you don't want to use with celluar data (like App Store, YouTube, etc.). Even though once you have disabled Wi-Fi Assist you should be good to go.
My son always used the most data in my 40GB data plan, and I could never explain why. He says that when he is in school he is always on Wi-Fi at school. And when he is at home his iPhone is on Wi-Fi here at home. But if the Wi-Fi connecton is slow, and you have Wi-Fi Assist enabled it will use your LTE data!
Just some food for thought. Good luck
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longmike94
Contributor
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1 Message
6 years ago
When you turn off your cellular data in settings, you do not get voice mail messages until you turn cellular data back on which is a real problem if the voice message is urgently important.
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sandblaster
ACE - Expert
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64.7K Messages
6 years ago
@longmike94 Not entirely true. If you turn off cellular data, you do turn off visual voicemail but you can always retrieve voicemail by calling. Even with cellular data off, you should see an indicator when you have a voicemail. At least I do on my iPhone.
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OneUser
Contributor
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2 Messages
5 years ago
After activating Att service for two lines it already racked up 6.5GB in 7 days without knowing Att charges home WiFi usage as data rate. Coming from Sprint this is a real surprise. Sprint automatically turns off when WiFi is detected and never charged it as data plan. Well I have to wait 30 months to switch back to Sprint unlimited. I turn off cellular when I am home and having been watching the data usage.
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