Carrier On ATT burning through data like crazy ?

[Tig Bitties]

My Wife and I are on the good deal from ATT, the 2 phone lines shared, both with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 10GB shared data. Total with taxes is like $145 / month

In the past couple years, I was typically at 2.5GB to 3GB user, my Wife like 1.5GB. Well the past several months my bill is like $280 each month !!!! And says I am going over the 10GB shared data each month, by like a few GB's, of total like 14GB a month. WTF how's that even possible. We haven't changed our usage in years.

We never watch movies on our phones. We don't game whatsoever on our phones. We text, and surf the web the most, and make tons of phone calls. And we do check out YouTube, but nothing too large or full length shows or anything. Just little videos here and there.

How come, the past three years my Wife and I got by fine with using like 2.5GB each a month. And now all of a sudden we witch to the 10GB shared earlier this year, and we're going over it every month, and getting whacked ?

 

[mclld]

Good deal? Sheesh would hate to see their expensive, that is a ripoff

 

[Tig Bitties]

Good plan? Sheesh would hate to see their expensive, that is a ripoff

We might switch to T-Mobile because of this crap. Plan is noted to be 2 lines shared with 10GB for $ 130 / month, with a $25 monthly fee for my Wife's phone + taxes, so end of the day we should normally be paying like $165 / $170 each month. But it was like that the first month only, now we routinely getting billed like $250 to $280 each month, and say we go over our data amount each time, which I don't see how's that possible ?

 

[mclld]

Yeah sounds like bs for sure, I would be demanding an accounting of the supposed data used. Call and threaten to cancel and they will probably fix it. In my experience, most companys have a first line of defense who claim they can't do anything, only when you get serious and ask for the cancelation department will they do anything.

I do this every six months ths with att on my Uverse internet account. I have to threaten to cancel until I get the "promotional rate" which is always half price and I have been doing this for years. I used to do similar with XM radio and Dish Network as well when I had them

 

[jamezr]

My Wife and I are on the good deal from ATT, the 2 phone lines shared, both with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 10GB shared data. Total with taxes is like $145 / month

In the past couple years, I was typically at 2.5GB to 3GB user, my Wife like 1.5GB. Well the past several months my bill is like $280 each month !!!! And says I am going over the 10GB shared data each month, by like a few GB's, of total like 14GB a month. WTF how's that even possible. We haven't changed our usage in years.

We never watch movies on our phones. We don't game whatsoever on our phones. We text, and surf the web the most, and make tons of phone calls. And we do check out YouTube, but nothing too large or full length shows or anything. Just little videos here and there.

How come, the past three years my Wife and I got by fine with using like 2.5GB each a month. And now all of a sudden we witch to the 10GB shared earlier this year, and we're going over it every month, and getting whacked ?

Just a thought but.....if you have unlocked BL and custom roms on one or both phones. An application in the rom might be keeping a data connection open and using all your data.

 

[gotluck]

I would recommend gophone. No overages, throttled to 128kbps when you hit the cap - if overages are your concern. You can buy cards for a little under face value instead of the +++ that comes with postpaid.

 

[mclld]

Yeah prepaid is the way. I used to do contract then switched ST, 45/month for all but earlier this year I switched to Cricket. It uses ATT towers so I can use Att phones and I pay 95/month for 4 lines, each line unlimited text and talk with 2.5 gigs data. I could have got another line for 5 more but I have no one to use it.

 

[Tig Bitties]

I looked up Data usage in the settings. Listed from July 28th to August 27th. It showed my phone with Chrome at the top with 4.30GB used, and YouTube 1.08GB, Google Play Store 470mb, and the rest very minimal.

My Wife's phone listed YouTube at the top, with 1.5GB used, and Chrome with only 455mb used, and the rest minimal.

I am shocked at my Chrome usage showing over 4GB's ? I just surf the web a lot. Not movies with it.

 

[Tig Bitties]

Cricket is getting rave reviews on XDA, it uses ATT towers.

$55 / month for unlimited minutes + texts with 10GB data !!!

https://www.cricketwireless.com/cell-phone-plans

F. you ATT, you have become worse than Verizon last couple of years, which I didn't think was possible.

 

[s0nicpr0s]

Not suggesting this to keep you from switching carriers, but have you by chance turned on Data Saver in Chrome? It's not a huge game changer, and I mostly use it just for bandwidth reasons, but I average around 30-40% less monthly data usage.

 

[Tig Bitties]

Not suggesting this to keep you from switching carriers, but have you by chance turned on Data Saver in Chrome? It's not a huge game changer, and I mostly use it just for bandwidth reasons, but I average around 30-40% less monthly data usage.

Thanks, I'll try the data saver option now.

 

[s0nicpr0s]

No worries. Hopefully it'll help you save a little bit on that premium for extra data that AT&T charges. What is it now, like $10/GB?

Also, were there other apps on either phone that just seemed to be drawing a lot of unexpected data? With 10 GB shared, I'm only seeing 8 GB from what you listed. I'm thinking about those apps you only use for a few minutes per month, but somehow have used something north of 50 MB.

 

[gotluck]

cricket is great. as far as the differences btw cricket and gophone go all data is routed through a 'mvno proxy' and i believe lte is capped at 8mbps and hspa at 4 mbps. latency suffers a little. You get way more data for the money with cricket and the family plans are stellar. Gophone uses ATT towers and does not use an 'mvno proxy server' it uses the stock ATT postpaid APN

just FWIW.

check out howardforums to see the real gophone vs cricket wars
it is a fantastic site for cell carrier info
____

That is a crazy amount of data for just web surfing though. especially if it is not from media.

 

[Cromulent]

I can't believe how expensive things are in the USA when it comes to mobile phones. You can get unlimited minutes, texts and data for like $42 a month here and unlimited data means unlimited I've never had it throttle no matter how much I use.

 

[C DM]

I can't believe how expensive things are in the USA when it comes to mobile phones. You can get unlimited minutes, texts and data for like $42 a month here and unlimited data means unlimited I've never had it throttle no matter how much I use.

Just like how expensive some other things like gas and various other products/services are in other places.

 

[macdaddy121]

I'm on AT&T too and this recently happened to me. For some unknown reason, over the past 3 months, I have been using at least twice as much data but my phone and needs haven't changed. I don't feel like I'm doing anything different than I did 6 months ago but my data usage is a lot more than it used to be. I just upped my data plan because I was getting tired of the overages... seems fishy to me.

 

[maflynn]

Did you check your apps, I had an issue with Facebook chewing up cellular data for a while and I had to disable some features.

 

[gotluck]

I can't believe how expensive things are in the USA when it comes to mobile phones. You can get unlimited minutes, texts and data for like $42 a month here and unlimited data means unlimited I've never had it throttle no matter how much I use.

Haha, I pay about $42 on att gophone for unl talk, text 1.5gb data then 128kbps throttle

 

[Cromulent]

Just like how expensive some other things like gas and various other products/services are in other places.

True I guess. Petrol is much more expensive here but you would have thought with something so ubiquitous as mobile phones would have dropped in price over the last 20 years.

 

[C DM]

True I guess. Petrol is much more expensive here but you would have thought with something so ubiquitous as mobile phones would have dropped in price over the last 20 years.

While the general aspect of mobile phones is ubiquitous, when it comes to the networks and the land area and infrastructure that carriers have to have and support in one geographical area vs. another it can certainly be different. Cars are also ubiquitous in that similar sense, but to drive one in one are can cost quite a bit more or less than another area, and that pricing can and does go up and down over time too.

 

[iphonedude2008]

True I guess. Petrol is much more expensive here but you would have thought with something so ubiquitous as mobile phones would have dropped in price over the last 20 years.

The problem with the US is that fact that people want to use their phones in the US. That means that carriers have to build, maintain, and regularly upgrade infrastructure that covers the huge, sprawling population of the US. Population density is low on average, meaning you need more cell towers and the cost per person to the carriers is much larger than most other nations. Sure, other factors play a role like limited choice and easy competition, but that's the main reason.