Odd Data Usage While In WIfi

[DaBruuzer]

Hello PM Community!  Very happy to be here, just activated and ported over this afternoon.  I just wanted to ask a question about some data usage, if I may.

I activated my line and all is fine there.  I am at work, connected to wifi as always.  I sent a text to my wife, made a call to my own landline here, all working correctly.  However, I just took a peek at my account, and somehow I have already used 5MB of data.  While connected to wifi (verified).  I never left the building, or even got up from my desk.

Does PM text NOT include MMS, perhaps?  The second text to my wife was a selfie, to test MMS.  Other than that, I can't figure out why ANY data has been used.  I appreciate any ideas/help in advance.

[Space_Ghost]

Hi all,

OK, so this issue was driving me crazy so much so that I actually went and used a "Life Line" and asked a friend who works at one of the big three's telecom company doing phone support and he is very high up in terms of phone support level. I told him what was going on and he told me that this sounds like the "WiFi bug". To fix this you will need to clean the cache partition on the phone. This is a partition on the phone that contains apps and other things that the phone puts there temperarily during app/OS upgrades. These can sometimes interfere with the WiFi. How this got triggered during my switch to PM I don't know but I can say that if you clean the cache partition on the phone, the problem is greatly reduced and or eliminated. I did this for my phone and so far so good. Each phone has a different method to do this. I would suggest that if you are going through this issue, then "Google"  "clean the cache partition" followed by your phone name and follow the intructions. If you do try this potential solution, please post so that others know if it helped or not. For the XPlay, the link is (hopefully links are allowed):

https://www.techlegends.in/how-to-fix-the-moto-x-play-wifi-bug/

Regards,

Space_Ghost

[neilselden]

Hi @Space_Ghost,

Sorry if I missed this info, but are you using an iPhone?  By default, an iPhone will switch to your data connection when it has a weak wifi signal.

Typically, your phone controls if is using data or wifi.  I would not think this is a PM issue at all.

If you are on Android, there is a good battery-saving app (Green Power) that does a pretty good job of enabling and disabling data and wifi (need to be rooted in order to control data hwoever)

Cheers,

Neil

[Space_Ghost]

Hi @DaBruuzer,

Thanks for the notice! I don't think that the problem is the mismatch between what is being registered on the phone and what is being registered with PM in terms of the data usage. There will always be a small mismatch and what is on your account with PM will be what is going to be used. The issue is this flip flopping between LTE data and WiFI when WiFi is available! This is disturbing to me because:

1. It is using LTE data when it shouldn't and therefore burning through our plan when there is no need

2. it is draining our phones' batteries which decreases their lives in the long run because of the constant charging.

3. Issue 2 leads to shortened phone life because most of the batteries in today's newer phones are built in.

I've even done a factory reset yesterday thinking that something didn't get installed properly shortly after I switched to PM but still the same issue is occuring.

PM needs to look into this ASAP.

Thank you,

Space_Ghost

[Space_Ghost]

Guys,

I also installed an app called Smart WiFi Toggler and it shows your WiFi being turned on and off. From 2:38 pm today that I've installed it, here is the log:

2:53 PM     Connected

2:53 PM     Disconnected

2:47 PM     Connected

2:47 PM    Disconnected

2:45 PM     Connected

2:45 PM    Disconnected

2:44 PM     Connected

2:44 PM    Disconnected

2:39 PM     Connected

2:39 PM    Disconnected

2:38 PM     Connected

2:38 PM    Disconnected

Can someone please have a look at this?

Thanks,

Space_Ghost

[DaBruuzer]

I have been monitoring my data usage on both my phone, and on PM's account page, and it seems that after the first few days, they both equalized.  Right now, they are very close in usage estimates.  I would say just give it some time, keep an eye on it, and report any irregularities. 

[Space_Ghost]

Guys,

I'm having a similar issue with both phones that I brought to PM from Koodo. Both are Moto XPlays. With Koodo, I had 200 MB per month and I was able to stay within that but now that I've moved here, I've blown past that already!! The LTE turns on while my phone is locked with my WiFi set to be "always on" and I'm not even 3 metres away from my new router!! I think that there may be an issue in the PM SIM programming. I'm wondering if there is a tolerance level that is set to be very wide so that if there is no WiFi signal within that width, the LTE turns on. The constant switch also drains the battery which is also what I'm noticing.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Space_Ghost 

[samgabbay]

10-4. Let me know and im here to help!

[DaBruuzer]

Not that I have ever seen.  I can see that when the phone first joined the PM network, it send out a data ping for 0.3MB of data, which is exactly the same amount of data that the phone believes has been used on the new network.  May just be that PM has an odd way of tracking, but I will continue to monitor.

[samgabbay]

I See, Do you have an Intelligent network switching setting anywhere on your phone?

[DaBruuzer]

Working flawlessly - I am a bit of a techie, and set up the networks here at the office myself (with the help of an actual IT-employed friend).  Not only is it a top-notch system, but we have dual redundency, as we are all cloud-based for our internal systems.  No drops, all uptime today.

I run a OnePlus One, using Cyanogen - stable build with excellent performance.  Good suggestions though, but not the case here.

[samgabbay]

Is your Wi-Fi working Properly? It could be that the phone prefers to use data instead of Wi-Fi. What device do you own? iPhone or Android? 

Awaiting your reply.

Sam

[Sameer]

I noticed some slightly high usage initially as well, but I expect it to even out in the end.

Also, if you ran a data speed test or in the moments, where wifi wasn't connected, and when it switched to your data as you started up, its possible it used some data. 5MB isnt anything to worry about though.

[Jsauter · Accepted solution]

Give it a few days but keep an eye on it.  Something might have connected to the network when wifi dropped or something.  My first day it looked like I would use a lot of unecessary data but it evened out over the months.  Now my online numbers pretty much match my local numbers exactly.