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Extreme Data Usage with iOS 6

I'm noticing higher than normal data usage too. My cycle started on Saturday and I've already used almost 300 mb, which is definitely higher than normal.
My iPhone, however, reports that I have used only 8 mb which is obviously not accurate.
 
2 days after the ios 6 upgrade my iphone 4s said 9.8GB used. i think there is a bug where it counts wifi data as well
 
2 days after the ios 6 upgrade my iphone 4s said 9.8GB used. i think there is a bug where it counts wifi data as well
Click to expand...

I'm not seeing that, plus I'm checking with AT&T directly by logging into the site, and dialing *3282# (*DATA#) which requests a text with data usage.
 
I guess I'm not the only one.

I'm out of town on business so I've been tethered for the last few weeks. Normally I go through about 100-200mb/day.

I updated everything on Friday (iPhone, iPad and MacBook) via wifi hotspot. I was sitting around 1gb prior to the update. On Saturday my provider (Rogers) reported that I was up to 3.6gb of data overnight. By Sunday I was at 4.8gb and now I'm sitting at 5.6gb (was at 5.5 this morning).

I figure Saturday was probably do to the update and was a one time deal, but I'm chewing through about 1gb/day right now and I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary. The one thing I have noticed is that my iPhone now updates 878 Genius Data settings every time I connect my phone to my laptop.

I've shut off some of the things I've seen in this thread but I'm probably going to have to disable data in a few hours as I'm about to cap out on a 6gb plan. Kind of a bummer as I'm still out of town and my data plan doesn't reset for another three weeks ...
 
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I'm having an issue with excessive cellular data usage. Since I got my iPhone 5 Friday morning I've used 2+GB of data - which is out of the ordinary for me. I've called AT&T numerous time and each time they don't find an issue. When I've asked they state no one else has called in about this issue. They keep walking me through the steps of turning cell data off and/or getting a more expensive data plan. At the moment I'm on the hook for going over my cap.
 
I got a message from Verizon saying I was at 50% of my usage and a little while later I got another saying I had reached 90%! In that time period I had used maps for about 15 minutes and streamed a podcast. Most months I use under 2 gigs, and within the course of a few days now have somehow managed to hit my limit already.

I had to turn of cellular data for now until something changes. Really annoyed...
 
Are you guys using the iCloud backup?

I ask because I have never used that, I sync with iTunes. I use iCloud for notes and photostream, contacts, etc, but not backup.

My usage counter was showing 200+mb the first day, yet Verizon only showed around 39mb. The counter is clearly counting too much, possibly wifi. Not sure what else is going on but I hope Apple fixes the bug soon.
 
I believe Apple made a "feature" in iOS 6 where it will switch between cellular and wifi when available, depending on which is quickest.. could this have anything to do with it?
 
There is definitely something wrong. I upgraded to iOS 6 on the evening of the 22nd September. Since then I had 2 abnormally large data usage charges at exactly midnight while being at home with wifi coverage.

8zk3g2.png


I was only alerted to the problem after getting a warning from O2 about my data usage. I've since turned off all cellular data until this is fixed.
 
some-dude said:
I guess I'm not the only one.

I'm out of town on business so I've been tethered for the last few weeks. Normally I go through about 100-200mb/day.

I updated everything on Friday (iPhone, iPad and MacBook) via wifi hotspot. I was sitting around 1gb prior to the update. On Saturday my provider (Rogers) reported that I was up to 3.6gb of data overnight. By Sunday I was at 4.8gb and now I'm sitting at 5.6gb (was at 5.5 this morning).

I figure Saturday was probably do to the update and was a one time deal, but I'm chewing through about 1gb/day right now and I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary. The one thing I have noticed is that my iPhone now updates 878 Genius Data settings every time I connect my phone to my laptop.

I've shut off some of the things I've seen in this thread but I'm probably going to have to disable data in a few hours as I'm about to cap out on a 6gb plan. Kind of a bummer as I'm still out of town and my data plan doesn't reset for another three weeks ...
Click to expand...

I shut off iCloud, iTunes (iTunes was already off), Passbook and Reading list. I also disabled iTunes on my laptop to help ensure it isn't doing anything in the background I don't know about while it's tethered. Last night I went 300kb up and 900kb down (zero tether since I disconnected my phone).

Sad thing is that I use iCloud Document syncing so I'm hoping that wasn't the issue...
 
FWIW I saw this behaviour in the betas. I erased my phone and restored from an iCloud backup and stopped seeing this behaviour.
 
Those of you seeing high usage on the carrier side, what are you using? iTunes Match or iCloud backup? I'm wondering if these are using data when not on wifi even though that's not supposed to be the case?
 
Loy guys,

I no longer have an Iphone but I remembered reading this.

mobile.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363320/wi-fi-cellular-feature-pulled-from-ios-6

look into it and if not restore.
 
black743 said:
Those of you seeing high usage on the carrier side, what are you using? iTunes Match or iCloud backup? I'm wondering if these are using data when not on wifi even though that's not supposed to be the case?
Click to expand...

I don't use either iTunes Match or iCloud backup.

It's been 24 hours now with no abnormal usage. I'm going to turn one thing back on at a time and monitor to see if usage spikes.
 
I use iCloud backup, but I doubt that covers my usage.

I've started logging as much as I can about my usage habits by:
  • Taking screenshots of the cell usage screen as I leave and enter wifi coverage
  • Running a VPN that I connect to while on 4G
  • Said VPN is runnning Wireshark to capture all data
  • Paying attention to what I'm using my phone for

I saw two abnormal things from today:
  1. At 9:05 AM my download count was at 7.9 MB. (Arrived in the parking lot) At 9:17 AM my download count was at 45 KB. (Arrived in the office) I did not reset my statistics in between that time. (Last reset yesterday at 10:26 am)
  2. I left work at 5:50 PM with 831 KB down. I used Spotify in my car to play music from the offline cache. At 6:08 PM when I arrived home, I had 8 MB downloaded. I will have to check the VPN logs to see what it was.
 
My Iphone5/IOS6 says I used 1.3 GB, but my account on Verizon says I used only 400mb in the last 3 days. I am thinking that there is a glitch in IOS6 usage numbers.
 
Imac Sam said:
My Iphone5/IOS6 says I used 1.3 GB, but my account on Verizon says I used only 400mb in the last 3 days. I am thinking that there is a glitch in IOS6 usage numbers.
Click to expand...

That's the opposite of what I'm seeing though. AT&T's website shows substantial usage, and they've charged me $20 because of it.

I analyzed the usage from my trip home. It would appear Spotify is the primary culprit. It's offline mode still usages a fair amount of bandwidth. For what? I'm not sure. I think it might be streaming anyway, even though it should only be pulling from the local cache. I will have to look closer at the packets and distribution.

MChKv.png


To people seeing increased usage, what cloud based services do you use?

Edit: In the graphic above, 192.168.1.201 is my phone as assigned an IP by the VPN. This is of course not a very large sample (8ish MB), but it's still unexpected. I will try and track some more usage tomorrow.
 
I am on Telstra and haven't noticed any large data downloads thankfully - after reading this, I will keep an eye out for the data usage from now on
 
Just checked my data usage in my 4s using ios6. According to the 4s, I've used 3.9 GB over the last 2 days but Verizon is showing 115mb.
 
I had this issue when iOS 5 came out. It was the diagnostics and usage reports. It was sending those all the time. When I turned that off it got better. Now it's back to normal usage, even with iOS 6.
 
I've had this exact experience on my iPhone 5. In my case I'm blaming iTunes Match.

Late last night, on WiFi, I went through my iTunes library on my phone and selected a whole heap of music to download from iTunes Match.

When I woke up, it was still downloading. I have iTunes cellular downloads turned OFF in the settings, so I figured meh it'll just stop and start downloading again when I get to work and hit WiFi again.

When I got to work about half an hour later, my iPhone was kind of hot but I didn't think anything of it until a few hours later I get a text message from my carrier (Telstra) saying I've exceeded my data allowance.

Last night when I checked it was at 180mb, when I got the alert it was at 1.4gb! The cellular usage in settings matches the figure from Telstra exactly.

While extremely annoying and perplexing, it just shows the speed of LTE being able to potentially download 1.2gb in the half hour trip to work!
 
Are you guys calling Apple about this?

I called, they said I was the first they had heard and would see if they get anymore. Their bug fixes are based on the number of calls, so all of you need to call and get this moved to the top of their list.

So everyone call Apple, your carriers don't care and can't do anything to fix it....they'll just make money off overages.
 
zim2411 said:
That's the opposite of what I'm seeing though. AT&T's website shows substantial usage, and they've charged me $20 because of it.

I analyzed the usage from my trip home. It would appear Spotify is the primary culprit. It's offline mode still usages a fair amount of bandwidth. For what? I'm not sure. I think it might be streaming anyway, even though it should only be pulling from the local cache. I will have to look closer at the packets and distribution.

Image

To people seeing increased usage, what cloud based services do you use?

Edit: In the graphic above, 192.168.1.201 is my phone as assigned an IP by the VPN. This is of course not a very large sample (8ish MB), but it's still unexpected. I will try and track some more usage tomorrow.
Click to expand...

How did you get that data report?
Same issue on AT&T. 1.1GB since Sat (mostly received, not sent). I use about 250-500mb per month for 5 years. No changes in use.

On wifi about 95%.
 
Me too

Just want to chime in. I got the iPhone 5 on release day, was on wifi the whole night and wake up to a bunch of Verizon alerts saying I went over my data limit. I log into my account and have somehow downloaded 9GB of data over cellular while on wifi! I immediately called up Verizon and reported the issue. I then called Apple and reported it as well.

Apple had me do a restore and then check everything. After a clean restore I turned the phone on and go into cellular data usage and it is literally downloading a couple mb in the few seconds it takes me to go in and out of the cellular data usage setting. I go in and out of the setting 5 or 6 times and this continues until I finally turn off cellular data. The phone just keeps downloading random data on wifi nonstop. I even video taped myself turning the phone off and back on so there were no apps in the background and watching the usage fly up while I was on the phone with Apple.

There is definitely an issue and I'm afraid I'm going to get stuck with the $135 in overages. I have cases open with Apple and Verizon's engineering team and am waiting to hear back. Both Apple and Verizon admitted to having seen this happen before. Verizon keeps reassuring me that I wont have to pay the overages, but I'm not really buying it. I have had 2 new iPads since they came out and an iPhone on a shared data plan and have never gone over my 4GB. This is really frustrating and I'm now using my phone without cellular data turned on since I cant afford to have a $10,000 bill at the end of the month when my phone decides to randomly start downloading data. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated, but I'm pretty sure I've tried just about anything.
 
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