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LTE Data usage

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pilot370

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
44
16
Dark side of the Moon
I received my new Ipad yesterday, the 4G LTE 32 gig and activated my data plan. I had a 3G first gen ipad also so i canceled that plan before starting the new one up. I live in Detroit so we dont have LTE just yet, no big deal. I airlined out to Phoenix today where they DO have LTE so I was all geeked about getting some speed test's on the LTE network. I opted for the 250MB plan just to let you know.
I was playing a few games on the plane so they were still in the 'background'. When I was playing them I was not on wifi. So i get to the hotel and see the LTE network icon and do 4 speed tests using Speedtest by Ookla. After the fourth test I get a message saying i was withing 2% of reaching my 250 mb limit!!??
How can doing 4 speed test eat up all that data? I called AT&T and they could see the usage but couldn't see all of it because of the system doesnt update right away. She then asked if I could double tap the home button to see what was running in the back ground and I had the two games, Airsupremacy and Real Racing 2HD, also Safari and Messages.
She said according to the 'Team' that those programs were probably eating up my data. How can this be? I had the 3G with the same games running and have never even came close to half of 250MB of my data usage.

Any one else have this issue? She did credit me another 250 MB when this one ran out.
Thanks,
John
 
mulo

mulo

macrumors 68020
Aug 22, 2010
2,267
5
Behind you
the faster the connection, the more data you need to download/upload when doing a speedtest to get a semi accurate estimate
 
AppleDApp

AppleDApp

macrumors 68020
Jun 21, 2011
2,413
45
just putting this out there but did you download your apps on wifi, 4g or did you use itunes to restore?
 
Tortri

Tortri

macrumors 6502a
Aug 30, 2010
759
9
Well you have a 250MB (Megabyte) plan. If you used speedtest and say your download speed was 8Mb's (Megabits) Just so you know 8 bits = 1 byte so 8 Mb's = 1 MB and you said you did a couple speedtest's and they usually take around 5 seconds, 5 seconds x 1MB = 5MB's used per test. So say you did this 5 times, 5 tests x 5MB's(each) = 25MB already used. So thats 25MB right there now say you downloaded a few games thats a around probably 40MB depending what you might have downloaded. Your already getting close to 100MB of your plan right there. This doesn't even include the upload portion of the speedtest app. So after adding that you would probably be at 100MB used on your plan.
 
P

pilot370

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
44
16
Dark side of the Moon
No i did not download any games. I was playing them on the plane and they were in the 'tray' as you double click the home button. Yes I understand about the tests using that much of my planned data, but just trying to fond out where the rest went?
 
A

AR15MBP

macrumors 6502
Jan 6, 2009
252
4
USA
pilot370 said:
I received my new Ipad yesterday, the 4G LTE 32 gig and activated my data plan. I had a 3G first gen ipad also so i canceled that plan before starting the new one up. I live in Detroit so we dont have LTE just yet, no big deal. I airlined out to Phoenix today where they DO have LTE so I was all geeked about getting some speed test's on the LTE network. I opted for the 250MB plan just to let you know.
I was playing a few games on the plane so they were still in the 'background'. When I was playing them I was not on wifi. So i get to the hotel and see the LTE network icon and do 4 speed tests using Speedtest by Ookla. After the fourth test I get a message saying i was withing 2% of reaching my 250 mb limit!!??
How can doing 4 speed test eat up all that data? I called AT&T and they could see the usage but couldn't see all of it because of the system doesnt update right away. She then asked if I could double tap the home button to see what was running in the back ground and I had the two games, Airsupremacy and Real Racing 2HD, also Safari and Messages.
She said according to the 'Team' that those programs were probably eating up my data. How can this be? I had the 3G with the same games running and have never even came close to half of 250MB of my data usage.

Any one else have this issue? She did credit me another 250 MB when this one ran out.
Thanks,
John
Click to expand...

What kind of speeds were you getting?
 
S

St8kout

macrumors regular
May 17, 2010
151
0
I read a story about the downside of using icloud. If you have 2 or 3 moble devices all on icloud then you can expect increased data usage as icloud keeps them all synced. Take a pic with one and the others will download that pic, which is fine if you have wifi, but otherwise will show up in your data usage. We didn't see that one coming did we?

I was going to sign up for ATT's cheapo ipad data plan until I started looking at my daily cellphone data usage. It's way too easy to go over that limit in one month just from reading the news while eating breakfast at the local coffee shop (no wifi like McDonalds), but that's just me.
 
E

elie195

macrumors newbie
Sep 16, 2009
29
4
I've also had the 4G service for about a day. I've ran maybe 8 total speed tests using the app since yesterday, and have done some very light browsing (about 10 pages of Google and blogs), and downloaded a 4 minute song from iCloud and my data usage is ~ 600 MB already.

My previous iPad didn't have a cellular connection, but this seems pretty ridiculous. Luckily I got the 3 GB plan, no way I could manage with 250 MB. It seems like 250 MB of 4G service a month is just a trap.

As for speeds, I got 21/27 Mbps up/down. Pretty crazy.
 
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