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GaryNoine

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 28, 2015
82
37
Atlanta
Recently, I noticed large data charges after spending hours on Facetime (iPhone 6, AT&T) for business. Turns out I was connected to wifi (showing three bars), but Facetime was using data anyway. I realized this by going to cellular data and turning off Facetime, prompting the call to end immediately.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this issue; also, if there is any way to correct this besides turning off data for the Facetime app. Seems to me like it's either a glitch causing Facetime to not recognize the wifi, or a conspiracy by AT&T to make me pay them even more money for these outrageous data overages.
 

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,028
3,003
St. Louis, MO
Possibly a glitch, your carrier wouldn't be able to control which network Facetime goes over, that's up to the OS.

Oh, and BABA BOOEY!
 

Mlrollin91

macrumors G5
Nov 20, 2008
14,172
10,181
From what I have read in the past about FaceTime over WiFi/Cellular is that if you make the call on WiFi and for whatever reason your phone drops the WiFi connection for a split second, the call will transfer over to cellular, but once you are back in WiFi, it won't transfer back to WiFi and will remain a cellular call. So it can transfer off of WiFi but not back onto WiFi.
 

ucfgrad93

macrumors Core
Aug 17, 2007
19,579
10,875
Colorado
From what I have read in the past about FaceTime over WiFi/Cellular is that if you make the call on WiFi and for whatever reason your phone drops the WiFi connection for a split second, the call will transfer over to cellular, but once you are back in WiFi, it won't transfer back to WiFi and will remain a cellular call. So it can transfer off of WiFi but not back onto WiFi.

Interesting. Where did you read about this?
 

XTheLancerX

macrumors 68000
Aug 20, 2014
1,911
782
NY, USA
I always turn Cellular Data off, and turn Wi-Fi on when I am in my house. When I leave, I turn Cellular back on and I turn Wi-Fi off. The other day, I had just come in from outside, and I made a FaceTime call while I still was on LTE. After a couple minutes I realized that, and I turned on Wi-Fi first, (assumed FaceTime would switch over) and then I went to turn off Cellular Data. When I toggled the switch off, a message came up saying "Disabling Cellular Data will end FaceTime. Are you sure you want to disable Cellular Data?"

At this point I already had connected to Wi-Fi, had the symbol and everything in the status bar, so I was a bit confused. I proceeded by "Disable Cellular Data" and the call switched to Wi-Fi and continued without a problem. Just a bit of an iOS 9 bug, I assume. I am unsure whether toggling Cellular Data back on will cause the call to switch back to the Cellular connection or not, but I assume it would just continue on Wi-Fi.
 

ckc

macrumors regular
Nov 13, 2010
108
10
Interesting. Where did you read about this?
It goes for both iPhones and iPads.
Last year following a lot of problems in the UK Apple confirmed that if a device is connected to wifi and the signal drops for even a second the device automatically switches to cellular, the problem is that it stays on cellular until you end the connection and there is no way of knowing if this happened other than checking your cellular usage.
Always best to turn cellular data off until you need it.
 
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