Yep, it definitely doesn't sound right. The only thing I can think of is an overly aggressive push setting, but even ~200MB in the space of a couple of hours is far-fetched. Either way, I've disabled push for now and will keep an eye on the usage meter over the next few days.

you sure mail was not running? i believe mail checks from the background

yes mine is now 15mb. So well on track to stay under the 250 from Voda.

I do at home run it on wifi, though don't leave the wifi on overnight as you will find a dead battery in the morning.

Have mobileme checking every hour on mail, don't touch youtube so now thinking I will make this work.

Also when I travel I get Telstra free in the Qantas club so no usuage there either.

I've been using Wi-Fi at home, I'm not sure if the phone's internal count includes that, but I've used 12MB in about a day - which puts me well under my 500MB limit by months end.

Wi-fi at home does go through the battery, I'm lucky to get a day out of a charge.

I'm using Evernote which syncs to the net, as well as MobileMe for contact syncing and push email - which despite its little quirks is actually really cool.

I never understood the need for unlimited data, I just don't see how you can get through it all.

Positive. I killed it beforehand by holding the home button for 5 secs, but for better or worse, that doesn't stop mail from getting pushed. So I think it could be the push setting (see above). Fingers-crossed this won't happen again.

In the meantime, if any of you are curious about Optus' free month of data offer, this is what they told me.

The phone's usage meter only counts cellular data (GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA). Wi-Fi is excluded.

This was why I kept saying that they should offer unlimited plans. Charge an extra few dollars and most people won't even come close to hitting the 1Gb limit.

The good news is that in time, as the telco's see exactly what the usage patterns are like, we will see better plans, more data, etc.

This is why I only signed a 12 month contract - yes it cost me more now, but in 12 months, I will be able to get a new iphone and update my plan.

Bring it. . . . .

I am really concerned that the data usage the Telco's say we use verses the iPhone register are the same.

Didn't Vodafone have some sort of method of charging out their data in blocks of usage? Something like they do on calls of 30 sec . blocks even if you only use 1 second.

I've used 177MB since turning the phone on on Friday morning. I don't use Youtube as the network is so slow at loading videos it's painful to sit and wait.
I use the Tuner app, so once the unlimited data finishes, I'll have to stop using that (40MB per hour). I just hope that when the business plans come out, they'll have something a little more for the business end of town without being grossly expensive.

Man, I think I have ample left from my 500MB limit! I just find 3G slower than what I'm use to on wifi, I rarely use it! I've only used 1.5MB! And that's mainly checking email, showing people our current location on Google Maps...and that's really about it! As much as I like how Safari displays how websites should be, it's just too small...and too lazy to zoom every bit of the display to read it

youTube is really slow....even on wifi. I just bookmark my favs, and thats all I've done. Anything longer than 2 mins takes about 10 mins to load! LOL. But it's a nice simple interface. Same as Facebook for iPhone (website and app).

Check they've moved you on to the right plan properly. I looked online and have got through $350 of data since Friday - all of 8MB. They are still charging on my old plan rates of $1 per 5 mins until my billing cycle starts again. I rang and complained bitterly that no one told me about this, and it was ridiculous anyway, and they claim to have fixed it for me so my plan started on Friday rather than my next new billing cycle.

I've been saying this all along - the doomsayers (I'm looking at you Aussie tech journalists, but not Asher Moses who has wisely reserved his opinion) have all been crying foul that 1GB of data is nothing for the iPhone.

Bollocks. Unless you're a crazy YouTuber who is never around WiFi (and no disrespect, if you're paying your own iPhone bill, I doubt you'd have time for that much YouTube) the chances of getting past even 250MB in a month is remote.

Yay for mobile-optimised websites, WiFi, internet at home and work, and non-internet-related life-based thing.

I also have a coda 3g USB modem for my air. Was talking to them today and they agreed no reason I couldn't drop that sim in (being the same network).

Will give it a go at some stage this week. If it does work I can use that if I think I am going to doing anything to data intensive. Though struggling to think what at the moment.

I found youtube is fine, even on 3G. I managed to watch a couple of 10min clips using Optus 3G (chewed up 100MB already). Each clip played within 1 min and it continuously loading while watching it.

Mine seem to load it fully before playing :S

I might need to try it out some more, but yeah, disappointed with youTube thus far....thank goodness I'm not that into it.