'iOS 9 ate my mobile broadband plan' Apple is being sued over an iOS 9 feature that allegedly gobbled its way through people's monthly mobile data plans. The class-action legal challenge [PDF], filed on Friday in the US District Court in San Jose, California, alleges that Apple enabled by default a connection-boosting feature called Wi-Fi Assist that resulted in …
LTE isn't sold by the minute but by the packet, usually by GBs. Depends on the plan, really. Many plans, though, will limit your LTE usage to a certain numbre of GBs. What happens after that depends. Some charge you extra, others drop you to 3G HSPA or 2G EDGE. Some like Sprint and T-Mobile offer what would be best called "unmetered within reason" LTE plans (I'm on one).
Always some idiot claiming a conspiracy theory. Apple is hardly cooperative with the telcos in helping them charge more, otherwise they never would have introduced iMessage which bypassed all their SMS charges.
This was just a poor decision since Apple employees probably all have unlimited data and don't know what it is like to have to worry about using too much.
I agree here.
I think Apple's team has had the importance of a flawless user experience beaten into them so hard they are willing to forego common sense and introduce something like this.
On the other hand, it also highlights the ridiculous data plans we have in North America. I may be one of the last to be grandfathered into a straight $10/GB flex plan.
Try $2 per MB. That's what Telstra charged me for the data on my new smartphone. I ended up with a $1,300 bill on a phone that had cost me $149. Something went wrong with registering the DataPack I purchased. Trying to get the bill cancelled took me three months of visiting their shop, writing emails and calling them. It was finally resolved when I received a phone call from them saying they were going to shut off all my phones the next day. They said the credit was in the system; they didn't know why it hadn't gone through.
I removed the SIM card from the smartphone and put it back in my old Nokia 3315.
Android is equally annoying in this dept.
Because my work WiFi is proxied, Android won't automatically connect to it because it can't verify the Internet connection exists - presumably bypassing the proxy settings and trying a direct HTTPS connection.
When this fails, it connects to the network, displays a WiFi icon with a ! and continues to use 4G until I toggle WiFi and manually connect to the network.
"Because my work WiFi is proxied, Android won't automatically connect to it because it can't verify the Internet connection exists" --AC
In some earlier versions of Android, the opposite would happen though - unless you turned WiFi off you would suddenly lose navigation in strange cities as it dropped mobile data to connect to unencrypted WiFi that wasn't really open (but had a log on screen, etc).
"In some earlier versions of Android, the opposite would happen though - unless you turned WiFi off you would suddenly lose navigation in strange cities as it dropped mobile data to connect to unencrypted WiFi that wasn't really open (but had a log on screen, etc)." -- AC
Ah yes, I remember this too, you're right. So presumably my problem has been caused by the fix to yours. Hopefully their next fix will be to check the Internet connection using the set proxy, then we're all happy. :-)
On the "Still Untitled" podcast, Adam Savage mentioned this ate his family's monthly data cap in a week or so, and he had to run around turning the feature off on all the phones and tablets. He was not pleased.
On the other hand, he mentioned searching for the setting does not work, and I notice this is still broken in 9.1. For example, if you search for "assist", only the "assistive touch" feature is listed. Amusing.
In this somewhat unlikely scenario (we have a TV or tablet at home for that), Wi-Fi assist doesn't work because amongst other things, it doesn't work for apps which stream audio/video. Unless there's something wrong and it doesn't detect that.
Who pays attention to changes in their phone's status bar?
This bit me when I upgraded to iOS 9, luckily I saw it mentioned in an article a few days later so I turned it off before I'd run up my monthly data allotment. Sometimes my Wifi signal is a bit weak in my bedroom so Wifi Assist would be handy if not for the fact that I have limited data since I'm on wifi 99% of the time and browsing Facebook seems to eat data at a fantastic rate!
What I don't get is how this was not noticed during the public beta period for iOS 9. While I imagine Apple employees involved in testing would have unlimited data (or Apple pays for it and doesn't care how much they use, which is the same thing) that wouldn't be true of some of the developers and general public testing it. Did they tell Apple and were ignored or did no one notice until it went live?
I get that when they add new features they might be unused if it is left up to the users to turn them on, but they should have known this would end up costing some people money and thus the default should have been 'off'. Even those with unlimited data might not want this, if it meant hitting the point where their carrier starts to throttle their data.
There is a section under Mobile Data where you can set which apps are allowed to use WiFi and Cell data, and which apps may only use cell data.
I just switch off everything apart from a few light usage apps, so the heavy usage apps like video ones and settings may only use WiFi to connect to the internet.
I hadn't noticed the WiFi assist thing, but given my other settings, it's hasn't affected me.
True you can check only those apps you want using data. But normally I'd KNOW when I'm using data, because I'm not on wifi. So I might be using an app that I also want to be able to use on data when I'm at home, but because my wifi signal is a bit wonky at the moment due to my neighbor's signal interfering, I end up using a bunch of data without realizing it.
Maybe add a setting for allowing wifi assist, but it is easier just to turn the whole thing off because I can't really come up with a time when I'd want it. If my wifi is having problems and I really want to do whatever I was doing, I'll just turn off wifi and then I'm on LTE data, bingo.
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So iOS 9 has been out for just over a month and it's already consumed 5m in excess bandwidth? I don't think so. Also, if you read up on the conditions when it's actually used, it makes the excess claim even more dubious.
100% of the customers would already have to be using ~90% of their allowed bandwidth every month for this to push them over to excess charges. And even then would the amount add up to 5m?
That being said, it does make sense to set it off as a default.
Ok. Since you have real data, I'm curious, what is the sum of all your (less than 100MB) app updates that were downloaded after you updated to iOS 9? Those were downloadable over cellular regardless, before WiFi assist.
You can also check if the App Store is using cellular updates by going to Settings -> iTunes & App Stores -> Use Cellular Data
it's only iOS9, but is under Mobile Data. Scroll to the bottom - RIGHT to the bottom, below the listing of all the apps. Just where you'd expect to find a toggle switch like that....
Got it. Christ, that IS bad. It's not an issue for me as I live in a country with mainly unlimited plans (the difference in plans lies in the speed you get), but abroad this could have been annoying.
What on Earth made them come up with such a bad idea?
I got a text warning me about the issue, and how to switch it off.
However, I'm not on IOS 9, so I don't have that problem (or that switch).
I DO have a switch to tell it not to Use Cellular Data to download updates either. Which it decided to ignore this month. How old is my version of IOS? Let's just say I decided not to update to crapple maps or Fisher-Price icons.
I don't have an iPhone nor do the people I live with so I have a question. Doesn't the iPhone warn you when you are burning through your data quickly?
My phone has a built in app which keeps track of what you have used, how you are using it (which app is using exactly how much data) and when the data cap is refreshed. It even allows me to restrict data use either when I get near my limit or all the time. The info is pretty unmissable and details exactly how much I have left and for how long.
If the iPhone doesn't have this baked into iOS, are there not free apps that would do this for you or even premium apps that would do even more?
Posted in reply to Are You Listening Microsoft - somewhere up page from here ..
I hope so - because their stupid Win7 wireless behaviour burnt through my 2G allowance on one device in 2 days (1 GB each day) because the stupid %^&*(^ thing slected my Wireless Hotpot over the local WiFi signal.
And; it takes a ^&*$"£$$ reboot to make the 'preferance' control take effect. Not that it tells you this of course - it just looks as though it worked. But by then at least I knew I had to monitor my Wireless connection in Windows AND double check on the iThings. Who know how much of my company data plan I chewed - fortunately I don't see that bill...
2GB on one device (100% of months data in 2 days ); I found out what was happening when it had chewed another 2GB of my phone's hotspot - that was 4GB in 5 days
Gee thanks MS for making it so obvious that the default wifi connection is totally bloody random; unless you happen to chance on the wireless preferance page - which then doesn't work until after a reboot - at least the ithnings (at least mine do) change the wifi indicator when wifi assist kicks in
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Ok, so I'm paying my cell phone company and I'm paying my broadband company.
Why would I want to pay my cellphone company to use MY broadband bandwidth which I pay for to reduce their cost of their network. Isn't that stealing ? This option only makes sense if I get to make these calls without paying the cellphone company. Why do I want to pay two companies for the same service ?
I think you've misunderstood the feature. This feature is not WiFi calling. This is a feature that watches the "quality" of your WiFi signal and switches you over to "Cellular" when it thinks that WiFi isn't cutting it, just like your phone already does now, when it goes out of range of your WiFi, just that now, it'll make that decision earlier - when the signal strength or data throughput of your WiFi connection drops below a real-world-usable threshold.
Doesn't surprise me. Increasingly, computers are given more authority to download updates by themselves and perform maintenance when they should be "sleeping," Apple defines 16 tasks the Mac does during a "power nap."
I've heard horror stories from people who traveled on a cruise ship and were charged over a thousand dollars for data usage.
This is nothing new. Let's increase the claim to $7.5m and I'll join the suit with those other two people.
I kept running out of data every month after only two weeks on iOS6 and could not figure out where it was going. Helpful call center person at the telco told me to check the phone's backup settings. Turns out this helpful phone was backing up photo's, chats, and what not without me knowing. My pictures are not Pulitzer Prize material. The world - and I - will live on even if I lose all my pics. Would be nicer if I could still use Whatsapp and surf the net from the bathroom after the middle of the month.
Fsck me ... I live in a country where bandwidth is expensive.
(I'll sit down now... Steam is pouring from my ears and tears are running down my knees)
I was hitting my data limit before WiFi-assist.
I went with the strategy of turning off mobile data for every app I had installed.
I then turned it back on as and when I first needed it.
I haven't hit my data cap since, not even with WiFi-assist and haven't noticed any loss of functionality.
iOS gives you the information about how much data different apps are using right in the settings,
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