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Data spikes?

spartanrob

spartanrob

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2008
316
0
My daughter has the $15, 200 MB data plan. the last 2 months she has been going over. she is always on wifi at home. I went to ATT OLAM and have have noticed huge spikes of data, many in the middle of the night, but some during the day.

Any way to figure out what is using so much data?

For now, i've turned data off and wifi only until the billing cycle ends, but that's 12 days away.

Any input appreciated.
 
It could be a lot of things.. Is she on facebook, twitter? A lot of those apps may stay running and they do use data. It's a fact when you leave your iPhone charging at night, you may notice some KB in data used. It's normal. It's also AT&T. Just turn data off every night and whenever she knows she won't be using it for awhile. When the iPhone is on, there's always data being used for some reason. Some you can't even notice sometimes though.
 
spartanrob said:
My daughter has the $15, 200 MB data plan. the last 2 months she has been going over. she is always on wifi at home. I went to ATT OLAM and have have noticed huge spikes of data, many in the middle of the night, but some during the day.

Any way to figure out what is using so much data?

For now, i've turned data off and wifi only until the billing cycle ends, but that's 12 days away.

Any input appreciated.
Click to expand...

What is AT&T OLAM?
 
I had this issue too, in India. I had switched off data completely on my phone and yet, for those days, i was being charged for the data downloads.

For now, i have kinda moved to little expensive and higher limit plan and so far, seems to be in limit.

is there a way, we can extract a log or something of that sort that tells us when we accessed data via 3G or via wifi ??
 
blevins321 said:
Online account manager
Click to expand...

Thank you! I can't keep up with all these damn acronyms.

Interestingly enough, I looked into my daughters data usage last month (she has a grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T) on a whim, and noticed that she had a HUGH spike in data starting in June. March, April & May she used about 500mb each month. June & July...1.8 & 2.0 gig. I asked her what she started doing since June and of course her answer was "I havent done anything different" lol...I have narrowed it down to her streaming Pandora as she drifts off to sleep.

Anyway, what I would like to know is how you get to see the data useage by time of day? All I could find was a bar graph for each month. I would love to see a detailed chart of data useage by the hour.

Thanks!
 
sulpfiction said:
Thank you! I can't keep up with all these damn acronyms.

Interestingly enough, I looked into my daughters data usage last month (she has a grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T) on a whim, and noticed that she had a HUGH spike in data starting in June. March, April & May she used about 500mb each month. June & July...1.8 & 2.0 gig. I asked her what she started doing since June and of course her answer was "I havent done anything different" lol...I have narrowed it down to her streaming Pandora as she drifts off to sleep.

Anyway, what I would like to know is how you get to see the data useage by time of day? All I could find was a bar graph for each month. I would love to see a detailed chart of data useage by the hour.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
When you log in to your account online, there is an area that shows actual usage. by default it shows everything, but you can filter it down to just show internet usage. It's in the "View Billed Usage" section

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The other strange thing about this is, most if not all of these data spikes occur when her phone is connected to our home wireless network (ATT Uverse).

that confuses me even more.
 
sulpfiction said:
Thank you! I can't keep up with all these damn acronyms.

Interestingly enough, I looked into my daughters data usage last month (she has a grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T) on a whim, and noticed that she had a HUGH spike in data starting in June. March, April & May she used about 500mb each month. June & July...1.8 & 2.0 gig. I asked her what she started doing since June and of course her answer was "I havent done anything different" lol...I have narrowed it down to her streaming Pandora as she drifts off to sleep.

Anyway, what I would like to know is how you get to see the data useage by time of day? All I could find was a bar graph for each month. I would love to see a detailed chart of data useage by the hour.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I actually use an app called Data Usage. It tracks data usage, realtime. It's 99 cents though.
 
spartanrob said:
When you log in to your account online, there is an area that shows actual usage. by default it shows everything, but you can filter it down to just show internet usage. It's in the "View Billed Usage" section

----------



----------

The other strange thing about this is, most if not all of these data spikes occur when her phone is connected to our home wireless network (ATT Uverse).

that confuses me even more.
Click to expand...
Did you miss this part? ATT will bill you for data at night usually for the whole day sometimes.
blevins321 said:
AT&T sometimes reconciles data usage during a bulk batch operation in the middle of the night.
Click to expand...
Also, when your phone is put to sleep, wifi will turn off. So whatever is using data would be using ATT data
 
Carl G35c said:
Did you miss this part? ATT will bill you for data at night usually for the whole day sometimes.

Also, when your phone is put to sleep, wifi will turn off. So whatever is using data would be using ATT data
Click to expand...

I saw that about billing for the whole day, but the spike is not the only data billed for that day, there are a bunch of line items each day. Last night, we turned data off and left wifi on. we will see what happens.

Are you sure that Wifi is off when the phone is sleeping? I've never heard that before.

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RotaryP7 said:
I actually use an app called Data Usage. It tracks data usage, realtime. It's 99 cents though.
Click to expand...

Thanks, That looks promising
 
spartanrob said:
I saw that about billing for the whole day, but the spike is not the only data billed for that day, there are a bunch of line items each day. Last night, we turned data off and left wifi on. we will see what happens.

Are you sure that Wifi is off when the phone is sleeping? I've never heard that before.
Click to expand...

positive. http://forums.att.com/t5/Apple-iPho...Off-in-Sleep-Mode-Consumer-Fraud/td-p/2547733

If you are on wifi, put your phone to sleep by hitting the lock button. Wait a few mins and awaken it. You'll notice by the carrier signal, wifi won't be connected and will reconnect once again if wifi is available.
 
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