So, it’s been one month of tracking my data usage with AT&T and my iPhone 4S. The numbers are very interesting. The raw stats are as follows:

• iPhone reports I’ve sent 195MB, and received 355MB, for a total used of 550MB.
• AT&T’s website/mobile app reports that I’ve used 1191.08MB.

Oddly enough, the AT&T site reports I’ve used almost twice as much as the phone says I’ve used. I’m not the only one to see issues like this, by the way.

I was willing to write this off as an anomaly, but twice the data use means there is SOME kind of issue, somewhere. So, I’ve reset my counters again, but I’ve also reset my wife’s iPhone as well as my daughter’s. Now I’m collecting three different sets of data for the month of March, hoping to make sense of this.

More to come as the weeks roll on. If you’re interested in doing this yourself, it’s pretty easy… Just go to the Settings app on your iPhone, hit usage, then select cellular data at the bottom of the usage screen. To get the AT&T side of the data use, there are three ways to get that data. First, you can find it on their website if you have an account and login. Second, you can use the myAT&T app from the app store. Or the easiest way to collect what AT&T thinks your usage is is to just simply make a call to *3282#. You’ll receive a text message not long after with your current data use.

The more of us that track this, the easier it will be to get to the bottom of it, whether it’s a problem in the firmware of the iPhone or AT&T doing something fishy with the billing.

As I wrote my last blog post on AT&T’s throttling, I noticed this interesting-placed ad for AT&T on TUAW…

“Only AT&T’s network lets your iPhone 4S download 3x faster” OH REALLY? Not if you go over 3GB of usage in a month, apparently…. Come on, AT&T. Yes, bandwidth is a finite resource. But if you’re going to advertise how kickass your network is in one breath while telling us unlimited folks how we’re going to be HAMSTRUNG if we use too much of your service… BITE ME. At least bump us “unlimited” folks to your 5GB with tethering plan (your maximum current plan). You could make this a total win, PR-wise, and you could actually have some possible customer retention by doing so. Instead… #fail.

AT&T has defined their official throttling policy for smartphone users on “Unlimited” rate plans. Turns out, unlimited really doesn’t mean unlimited, if you’re AT&T.

Smartphone users on a regular 3G device will start experiencing slower device speeds as they use more than 3GB of bandwidth in a month. Folks using a 4G LTE device will hit that cap a little later, at 5GB of bandwidth. Ironic, as I didn’t think that AT&T offered unlimited data plans when 4G devices came out - but I could be wrong on that point.

I rarely use more than 2GB in a month, so this isn’t a huge issue for me - but it does bother me. I’d like to know exactly HOW slow they plan on throttling people who bust the usage cap. What speeds can those people expect? 7MBit/sec? 3Mbit/sec? 1Mbit/sec? Or are they going to slam you into the internment camp of EDGE at its craptacular 160Kbit/sec? That remains undefined by AT&T. The fact that they are putting a limit on something unlimited bothers me as well… but I suspect that’s going to be a battle that us consumers will ultimately lose.

Thanks to TUAW and Boy Genius Report for breaking the news. If you’re not reading either site, give them a look.

Not too long ago, I wrote a blog post where I talked about AT&T’s Bandwidth Throttling policy, along with what appeared to be some sketchy accounting or buggy bandwidth utilization counters on the iPhone. In a nutshell, there’s a discrepancy where it appears that AT&T is billing me for 73% MORE bandwidth than I’m actually using.

It’s now been a week since I wrote that post, so I decided to check my utilization today. The iPhone is reporting 76.5MB of sent traffic, and 140MB of received traffic, for a total of 216.5MB. Seems about right, based on how my usage has “felt” over the last week.

Checking out AT&T’s website is something else entirely. According to their calculations, I’ve used 544.37MB. By my math, that’s 151% MORE than what the iPhone says. The pattern here is extremely alarming, and the discrepancy is well beyond what I’d consider any reasonable amount of error. My conclusion still stands: either the iPhone can’t track bandwidth usage correctly (something Apple needs to fix), or AT&T is grossly overbilling me.

I’m still going to continue to track this, but this is starting to get ridiculous. Has anyone else out there been comparing their data use? I’d like more data than just my experiences.

So, back on January 30, I received a text message from AT&T regarding the bandwidth use on my (grandfathered) Unlimited Data plan. There’s been a lot of people recently receiving messages like this, where AT&T is threatening to throttle their connection to EDGE-like speeds for “being in the top 5% of users”. I’m not alone in receiving these kinds of texts… Mike Senese, Discovery Channel host, also received one, as did Fox News’ Shepherd Smith. Both these fellas travel quite a bit, I’d imagine, and would probably use lots more data than I would… right? I checked my usage when I got the text message, and I was right at the 2GB mark. (I didn’t screen cap that, though I probably should have).

So, I resolved to keep an eye on my data usage. I checked out my bill (both online and paper) and found out that my billing cycle begins on the 12th of every month, so I set an appointment reminder (thank you, Siri) to remind me to reset the counters on the iPhone on the morning of the 12th. Since I do DevOps stuff for a living, practically the first thing I do when wake is check my phone, so I’d see the reminder and whack my phone’s counters early.

Sure enough, the 12th came, and I reset my counters so the experiment could begin. Note that the reset date on the stats is February 12 at 8:55am. (Hey, it was a Sunday. I’m allowed to sleep in!) 

I decided to check on it today (the 16th of February - five days into my billing cycle), and my iPhone says I’ve used 113MB.

I can believe that. I’ve watched a few YouTube vids, and done other stuff, so 113MB sounds about right.I then checked my usage against the myAT&T app that accesses the AT&T website for your usage… and I’m rather surprised with the result. AT&T is showing me as having used 196.54MB. That’s 83MB more than the iPhone itself reports. That’s a 73% difference.

It sure looks like either AT&T is overcharging me for data by a LARGE factor, or my iPhone’s counters are off. An argument could be made that I didn’t reset my counters exactly at midnight - and I’d agree, except my phone was “off” and in its charger between midnight and 9am when I reset the counter, and it was associated with my home wifi network, so it shouldn’t have been using the cell network AT ALL. I plan on continuing to dig into this, and I’ll post my results as the month goes on.