Phone ate 18gb of data today.

[mcdj]

We’re on a 20gb family plan with rollover from AT$T. We never go over 10gb or so.

Today I got a text from AT$T that we’ve used 75% of our data, 5 days into the billing period.

I checked the account online and it said there was a single 18gb data use today at 3pm.

My wife is out of town. I texted her to ask if she was tethering or streaming or something. She said no, but that she went for a run and was having issues with Nike Plus playing her running playlist.

She just got the iPhone 8 earlier this week and didn’t have a chance to download any of her music.

I don’t know how big her running playlist is, but her entire library is only about 25gb and her running playlist is a much smaller subset of the entire library.

I asked her to look at her downloaded music in the music app. But the app kept crashing.

Cellular data usage said that music was only using a few MBs.

Any idea what could suck down that much data in under an hour? She already had all her photos and all apps on the phone before she went out of town. Doesn’t seem to be music. Even an iOS update is only a gigabyte or so max.

18gb is a big chunk of mystery data.

 

[Apple_Robert]

The usage could be related to a rogue app or continuous attempts to download her music while running and or GPS usage during exercise.

 

[Vermifuge]

Setting -> cellular - Scroll down

look under "cellular data"

 

[mcdj]

The usage could be related to a rogue app or continuous attempts to download her music while running and or GPS usage during exercise.

18gb of attempts to download the music with no actual music downloaded? 18gb of GPS is like data for the entire planet lol.

Setting -> cellular - Scroll down

look under "cellular data"

Did you read my post?

 

[Vermifuge]

18gb of attempts to download the music with no actual music downloaded? 18gb of GPS is like data for the entire planet lol.


Did you read my post?

You only referenced one app. Not any of the other apps nor the system services section. I suggest doing what I said and looking at all the apps and system services under the area previously noted.

Ask the wife to screen shot those screens so you can look at all the apps data usage.

P.S. don’t be a jerk to people (who could be doing more productive things with their time) trying to help you. You get more flies with honey.

 

[boltjames]

She just got the iPhone 8 earlier this week and didn’t have a chance to download any of her music.

Just a wild guess, but any chance she downloaded all of her photos and/or apps off of an iCloud account over cellular instead of Wi-Fi when she moved to her new iPhone earlier this week?

 

[Applejuiced]

Everything should be listed there in settings, cellular.
If it's used by her device it should display every mb used by each app or by any system services.

 

[mcdj]

Just a wild guess, but any chance she downloaded all of her photos and/or apps off of an iCloud account over cellular instead of Wi-Fi when she moved to her new iPhone earlier this week?

Nope I did the migration myself on WiFi. And the 18gb use was today at 3pm.

You get more flies with honey.

Ew I don’t want flies.

I guess I will try to get her to send screenshots. She did say that she scanned the list and there was nothing that totaled in the gigabytes. Everything was kilobytes and megabytes. My own usage shows gigabytes for some things.

I’m just nervous about going over before she gets back Tuesday if she has some app that went rogue. She’s rebooted and I guess we’ll see.

 

[sean000]

Are you sure it was your wife's phone? Did you look at detailed mobile data usage report on AT&T's website? That will help you determine the exact time and device that

We’re on a 20gb family plan with rollover from AT$T. We never go over 10gb or so.

Today I got a text from AT$T that we’ve used 75% of our data, 5 days into the billing period.

I checked the account online and it said there was a single 18gb data use today at 3pm.

I take it you determined it was her phone by looking at the detailed mobile data usage report on AT&T's website?

My wife is out of town. I texted her to ask if she was tethering or streaming or something. She said no, but that she went for a run and was having issues with Nike Plus playing her running playlist.

She just got the iPhone 8 earlier this week and didn’t have a chance to download any of her music.

I don’t know how big her running playlist is, but her entire library is only about 25gb and her running playlist is a much smaller subset of the entire library.

I asked her to look at her downloaded music in the music app. But the app kept crashing.

Cellular data usage said that music was only using a few MBs.

Any idea what could suck down that much data in under an hour? She already had all her photos and all apps on the phone before she went out of town. Doesn’t seem to be music. Even an iOS update is only a gigabyte or so max.

18gb is a big chunk of mystery data.

Something in cellular data usage would have to show it if you are sure it was her iphone. She should check out every app and then see what it says for system services data usage as well. If the App Store is allowed to use cellular data, and she has auto updates enabled, that use a lot but probably not 18 GB worth. 18 GB sounds like it was downloading music, video, and/or photos. If you can't find any evidence of it by the time she returns, I'd call AT&T and dispute the report with screenshots from your iPhone cellular data usage screen. Since your wife got her iPhone 8 earlier in the week, the current reporting period should say that it started on the day she set up the device.

I bet she can find the culprit scanning the data usage list, but it's easy to miss if you have a lot of apps.

Sean

 

[Brandonjr36]

We’re on a 20gb family plan with rollover from AT$T. We never go over 10gb or so.

Today I got a text from AT$T that we’ve used 75% of our data, 5 days into the billing period.

I checked the account online and it said there was a single 18gb data use today at 3pm.

My wife is out of town. I texted her to ask if she was tethering or streaming or something. She said no, but that she went for a run and was having issues with Nike Plus playing her running playlist.

She just got the iPhone 8 earlier this week and didn’t have a chance to download any of her music.

I don’t know how big her running playlist is, but her entire library is only about 25gb and her running playlist is a much smaller subset of the entire library.

I asked her to look at her downloaded music in the music app. But the app kept crashing.

Cellular data usage said that music was only using a few MBs.

Any idea what could suck down that much data in under an hour? She already had all her photos and all apps on the phone before she went out of town. Doesn’t seem to be music. Even an iOS update is only a gigabyte or so max.

18gb is a big chunk of mystery data.

I’m not sure how you used all that data. But might be a good idea/time to switch over to the unlimited plan. They may let you do even in this billing cycle.

 

[BiggAW]

Something sounds fishy with that billing. Phones don't just use 18GB without the user doing something, and even if one were to try and use as much data as possible, it would take several hours with a typical LTE connection, even a fairly good one. I've subjected my phone to extreme usage for a week or more out of the month, plus regular usage the rest of the month, and never gone much over 10GB, and I knew where most of it was going.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Something sounds fishy with that billing. Phones don't just use 18GB without the user doing something, and even if one were to try and use as much data as possible, it would take several hours with a typical LTE connection, even a fairly good one. I've subjected my phone to extreme usage for a week or more out of the month, plus regular usage the rest of the month, and never gone much over 10GB, and I knew where most of it was going.

It is very easy to use 18GB in a few hours, if one is using the phone as a hotspot.

 

[Applejuiced]

It is very easy to use 18GB in a few hours, if one is using the phone as a hotspot.

Yes, what he said.
If you're downloading big files, music, video you can eat up 18gb pretty fast.
LTE connections are pretty high speed so it wouldn't take long to rack up multiple gb's of data.
If your LTE connection reaches about 22mbps for example it would take less than 2 hours to go over 18GB.

 

[mcdj]

Turns out the culprit was “iTunes Media Services” which apparently decided that all my wife’s previously downloaded music from iTunes Match had to be downloaded onto her new phone without asking. I think the buggy Nike Plus app is to blame because it wasn’t until she started that app that the data started being consumed.

Or it could just be the tech black cloud that seems to hang over my wife’s head.

The thing that makes me mad is that for 18gb of data used by iTunes Media Services, my wife has no accessible music without re-re-downloading it. In fact her music app won’t even open. I’ve had her install the latest update in hopes of giving it, but even usage shows the music app only using 21mb of space.

So it’s like like Nike Plus invoked a data request for the playlists she runs to, but choked on the download and then never gave her the music. 18gb of data usage for nothing.

On a side note, I noticed one of the apps in her cellular data usage is Springboard, with a blank icon. This makes me nervous about the integrity of her setup. I see no springboard app in my usage.

 

[haruhiko]

I always use third party apps for anything that has the ability to stream media, because I had some terrible experience with Apple's built-in media apps. The Podcast app, for instance, automatically helped me download lots of episodes which consumed all my data some years ago. For Apple Music, while I specifically restricted the streaming to WiFi only and guess what? One of the playlist I subscribed to changed content and the Music app deleted all the downloaded songs in the playlist at once, knowing that I would not be able to download the new songs as I'm on cellular data.

So it's Overcast for podcasts and Spotify for streaming music now. They always work as I expected.

 

[Menel]

Something sounds fishy with that billing. Phones don't just use 18GB without the user doing something, and even if one were to try and use as much data as possible, it would take several hours with a typical LTE connection, even a fairly good one. I've subjected my phone to extreme usage for a week or more out of the month, plus regular usage the rest of the month, and never gone much over 10GB, and I knew where most of it was going.

LTE connections are fast...

IPhone 8/X will run 290mbps on LTE depending on the tower you are connected to.

 

[ssledoux]

I can’t help with the whys, but I’d definitely call AT&T. They’re pretty good about crediting you for overages, especially if it’s not the norm for your usage.

I would consider going with unlimited though - the prices have gotten so much better, and you get some perks and credits on other things as well.

 

[sean000]

I can’t help with the whys, but I’d definitely call AT&T. They’re pretty good about crediting you for overages, especially if it’s not the norm for your usage.

I would consider going with unlimited though - the prices have gotten so much better, and you get some perks and credits on other things as well.

It's nice to know AT&T will do that for unexpected spikes in data usage. Our AT&T family plan is not unlimited, but my wife and I will each get a text when we have used 75% or more of the monthly quota. We aren't big data users at all because most of the time we are connected to WiFi at home or at the office. We just have the 3GB plan and usually have some rollover data. In the Winter I walk to work more frequently than I bike, and when I walk I often listen to streaming music, NPR One, or podcasts. That can use up the data much faster, but I can also conserve it by downloading podcasts when I'm on WiFi. I think we went over our 3GB plan once last year, but I have a lot of my apps set to use only WiFi.

 

[mcdj]

I would consider going with unlimited though - the prices have gotten so much better, and you get some perks and credits on other things as well.

I looked at the unlimited options. Too expensive. We’re in a quirky grandfathered 20gb plan with no speed cap on data or tethering. For 2 iPhones and an iPad, with a 24% corporate discount, our bill is $132 all in. We never use more than 10gb. The cheapest unlimited plan is $30 more before taxes and it has a 3mb speed cap.

 

[BiggAW]

LTE connections are fast...

IPhone 8/X will run 290mbps on LTE depending on the tower you are connected to.

In ideal conditions, yes. Typical speeds are 10-20mbps. My personal record was 127mbps I think.

I looked at the unlimited options. Too expensive. We’re in a quirky grandfathered 20gb plan with no speed cap on data or tethering. For 2 iPhones and an iPad, with a 24% corporate discount, our bill is $132 all in. We never use more than 10gb. The cheapest unlimited plan is $30 more before taxes and it has a 3mb speed cap.

And that's the crappy Unlimited plan. The Unlimited plans are a good value for the most extreme heavy users, but they are a bad deal for everyone else. You're likely better off staying with what you have, as the Unlimited plans were a big money grab on the carriers' parts in order to increase ARPU by selling everyone data that most people don't need.

 

[Brandonjr36]

In ideal conditions, yes. Typical speeds are 10-20mbps. My personal record was 127mbps I think.



And that's the crappy Unlimited plan. The Unlimited plans are a good value for the most extreme heavy users, but they are a bad deal for everyone else. You're likely better off staying with what you have, as the Unlimited plans were a big money grab on the carriers' parts in order to increase ARPU by selling everyone data that most people don't need.

Yea but like me I have 6 lines 25 gbs and the unlimited plus plan are only $5 difference. I myself don’t use a whole lot but my brother and sister both do. We as a whole use about 50 gigs.

 

[BiggAW]

Yea but like me I have 6 lines 25 gbs and the unlimited plus plan are only $5 difference. I myself don’t use a whole lot but my brother and sister both do. We as a whole use about 50 gigs.

It depends on the exact plan, but in most cases, Unlimited is significantly more, and is just a money grab. 50GB is a metric crapload of data, even for a shared plan!

 

[Brandonjr36]

It depends on the exact plan, but in most cases, Unlimited is significantly more, and is just a money grab. 50GB is a metric crapload of data, even for a shared plan!

Yeah I only use about 3-4 a month. My 15 year old sister will use 15-20gbs by herself.

 

[BiggAW]

Yeah I only use about 3-4 a month. My 15 year old sister will use 15-20gbs by herself.

YIKES that's a lot of data!

 

[Ries]

'Music Available Offline' is properly on and it downloaded your playlist