That doesn't address having a poor WiFi signal though as that seems to be the underlying issue.
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And that doesn't sound like it has anything to do with WiFi Assist.
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iOS 9.3 Displays Exact Wi-Fi Assist Data Usage Numbers
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Are you sure you don't have wifi assist turned off? Because for me it has helped the wifi-to-mobile-data transfer tremendously. No longer does pandora stutter or stop as I drive away from home. If I turn wifi assist off, it does.
Mike
I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I think WiFi Assist is supposed to only provide basic connectivity and not be used to download media files. I don't know if its documented anywhere, but I take that to mean it only downloads small files like HTML, CSS etc. and does not download JPG, MOV, MP4 and so on. I could be wrong, but that seems a sensible and straightforward thing to implement, and would explain Apple's attitude.
The My Verizon app adds a widget to the Today section of the Notification center that shows your data used out of how much you have available, with numbers and a progress bar.
I imagine the other three big carriers would have something similar. You may have to be an "authorized user" on the account (only relevant if you are on a family plan) to log into the app for your carrier.
I think the complaints against WiFi Assist are misdirected. The REAL problem seems to be something broken on Apple's iCloud back-end. I track my cellular data usage and power usage closely, and I noticed about six weeks ago that cellular data usage had skyrocketed over normal, and that it was ALL in System Services/Documents and Sync (and that, at the same time, battery seemed to drop by 5% every hour even when doing nothing).
With 9.2 this seemed to go away, but it then returned for a week ending about three days ago --- same thing, of massive cellular usage all for System Services/Documents and Sync, and battery going down by 5% an hour (unless you switch off BOTH WiFi and LTE so that there's no internet connectivity).
[Note, if you're interested, that I make no use of iCloud Drive, and only use about 100MB of my iCloud ration, primarily for lightweight preferences and synching Notes.app. In all cases when I was noting this cellular/power usage carefully, the usage occurred at the same rate even when I was making no changes to any part of my account on any Apple device.]
Given that, in both cases, the problem appeared, then disappeared, without an OS update involved, I can only conclude that there was a bug in the iCloud backend which resulted in it doing some sort of insane once-a-minute attempt to communicate with the phone.
My suspicion is that things like the $2000 cellular fee ultimately track back to this bug, not exactly to WiFi assiste per se; more to that fact of trying to transfer a crazy amount of data over and over, and using LTE because WiFi was frequently unavailable.
The depressing/worrying this is that I (and you) have no idea if this will happen again. I've had two months of extra $20 charges for data overuse driven PURELY by this Apple nonsense --- when it happens it ramps up my data usage so fast that I go from "plenty for the rest of the month" to "at 115% of usage" before ATT can even send out the "you are at 90% of your usage" warning. The fact that the bug was (apparently) killed but that Apple was sloppy enough to let it return again, a month later, for a week or so, does not give one much confidence in the quality of their iCloud operations and testing. The whole point of paying slightly more for an iPhone was so that one didn't have to manually curate everything about it (like switching LTE data off until you actually need it) and right now Apple has blown that confidence.
I know we all get irritated by what appear to be frivolous lawsuits. But it is ALSO the case that companies (or more precisely the managers and/or engineers of particular departments in a company) frequently get lazy and just don't care how they screw their customers; and this seems to be one of those cases. I reported this bug to Apple (with plenty of logging data) before 9.2 was released; and obviously they didn't care enough to fix it since then. So if a lawsuit is what it takes to make them do the right thing, go lawsuit. They certainly owe me $40 so far, not that I expect I'll ever see that.
