PerezMorrisFam wrote:... These overages have occured without changes in our actual usage patterns. ...
I love how many times I read those words from users who have iPhones and have updated their iOS or the apps on their OS and they don't understand that changing critical things like that *can* impact their data usage. FaceBook is one of the largest offending apps for app changes causing your device to suck up more cellular data usage without you even realizing that you are doing it. The app changes and automatically starts downloading and playing videos when you scroll past them, and it never did that before, but now it does that and eats p your cellular data in the process. We won't even touch on other app updates, or iOS version updates even though those can cause your data usage to change without you even thinking about it because you didn't change anything but a few apps obn yoru phone, or the basic OS on your phone...
I bought my iPhone 5 on it's launch day, and never reset it's cellular data counters at all. About 18 months later, I compared htose cellular data counters to the totals of what my bills from AT&T claimed I had used. Would you believe that in the 18 months I had used the device the iOS celular data usage counters and my bills only differed by a few hundred MB (with over 17GB data used). There was maybe a 1% variance between my cell phone counters and my AT&T bills over that 18 months. I find it hard to believe that my bill could be accurate, and your could be "intentionally wrong" by such a major variance without there being some amount of "user error" in there as well. I suspect that if you dig deep enough into it, you will find that the data usage reports aren't as far off as so many people want to claim.
Another major point of contention is that almost every smartphone OS out there today will turn off the wifi radio when teh phone's screen is in "sleep mode" to conserve battery. If your phone uses any data at that time, it will fall back to use cellular data even though you think it should be using wifi. This is just another reason why you may be using more cellular data than you think. You can than the smartphone makers for that one, as they use this technique to claim a few more minutes of battery life on their spec sheets.