"Media Services" burned through 4.5gb of cellular data!

[purplefuku]

My iPad burned through 4.2gb of cellular data a few days ago. (It's the 2nd time this has happened in recent weeks...) I checked and it was "System Services -> Media Services" that was the culprit. I searched around but it seems like there's no real information about this out there... (Some say iCloud, some say iTunes Match...) Does anyone know why my iPad would suddenly decide to burn that much data (despite being connected to wifi!)?

 

[bigcstyle4]

This happened to me on my iPhone because of iTunes Match last year and caused me to go over my data for the month. Before going to bed I accidentally tapped on the cloud icon on a playlist of about 1500 songs. There was no way to cancel this but I figured I'm on wifi so oh well.

I woke up in the morning and the phone was hot to the touch and downloaded the whole playlist over cellular for some reason. Data usage did not show under Music or iTunes but under Media Services.

 

[purplefuku]

That sounds like it would do it! But whyyyyy would it use cellular data instead of wifi?! :/ Thanks for the info!

 

[moonman239]

That sounds like it would do it! But whyyyyy would it use cellular data instead of wifi?! :/ Thanks for the info!

I guess it wasn't connected to wifi at that time. That's always a possibility.

 

[purplefuku]

I guess it wasn't connected to wifi at that time. That's always a possibility.

That's the most logical answer, I guess. Except it's done it twice now, so I guess now I need to check my home network for connection drops & keep cellular data off...

 

[IrishVixen]

Unless something's changed, it's not your network. iPhones don't have a persistent wifi connection when put to sleep, even when plugged in. Shortly after the screen goes off, wifi does as well. Anything done overnight therefore tends to consume data unless you put the phone into airplane mode & then turn just wifi back on.

This is not a new thing. It dates back to the first model, if I recall. There are short exceptions (iCloud backups, apps allowed to finish a task for a certain short amount of time), and jailbreak tweaks have been created in the past to hold a persistent connection, but for the most part, that's the way it is. Moral of the story: don't let your device sleep while downloading anything (or uploading--like photos!) if you have limited data.

Why Apple doesn't make an exception for downloading music from its own servers, I can't help you with...

 

[adamhenry]

Unless something's changed, it's not your network. iPhones don't have a persistent wifi connection when put to sleep, even when plugged in. Shortly after the screen goes off, wifi does as well. Anything done overnight therefore tends to consume data unless you put the phone into airplane mode & then turn just wifi back on.

If you turn off Cell data, the wifi connection will persist. My IP sets here sleeping all day with a WiFi connection, only waking to show notifications for incoming email.