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Phantom data usage?

charlton
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I was close to my limit last period so turned off Cellular Data and Wifi Assist completely (with about 40MB remaining). Then I went on a business trip and came back with a two days left before a new period began. I've continued to have Cellular Data and Wifi Assist disabled on my phone and yet after the renewal period, I can already see data being used. Right now, it only amounts to a tiny amount of data but I was surprised during the last cycle to have even come close to 12G of usage so I'm concerned that something else might be causing misaccounting.

 

Has anyone else seen/experienced anything similar?

4 REPLIES 4

will13am
Oracle
Oracle

This topic shows up from time to time.  My take on it is that the Public Mobile data meter is "legal tender" so to speak.  Like the scale at the grocery checkout, it is subject to quality control.  Personally, I use the data witness app for monitoring usage.  From renewal to renewal, I find my tracking to be close enough to what is logged in my account.  The differences may be due to round off.  I am not the least bit concerned that the official data meter is cheating in any way.

 

On the topic of round off, I recall when I was a Wind customer the round off when roaming was so skewed in favor of the carrier.  Whenever the flow of data stops for a short period of time, the meter would stop counting and assign a usage rounded up to the nearest MB.  Over a 24 hour period, the numerous sync operations that use tiny amounts of data would lead to large amounts of chargeable data when the actual data usage without roundoff would be tiny.  In that case, it was the coarseness of the roundoff that led to big discrepancies.  I can't remember where I read about how the Public Mobile meter does roundoff, going by memory the roundoff was in kB, so the accumulated error should be reasonbly small. 

charlton
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

@closng Yeah, that's exactly what I noticed as well...but I also noticed a slight increase over the last couple of hours or so. I'm going to continue to leave Cellular Data and Wifi Assist off and will monitor the usage.

mimmo
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

I have also noticed phantom data at renewal time.  But it is not really something to worry about.  I use a data tracker and it and PM are always very close to each other.

closng
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

 Hi @charlton,

 

I had a similar experience, going through my recent renewal cycle. I noticed that the system logged 5MB of usage right off the bat after my plan renewed, eventhough I've been on WiFi the whole night, at home. Given that it was such a small amount, I didn't really care.

 

I wonder if it is inevitable, considering Public Mobile/Telus provides services through 3G/LTE networks.

 

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