I collected my iphone on friday like many of us. I decided to get the overpriced $29 data pack because it is still cheaper than not getting one and been charged $2/mb if not having it. Anyway i noticed in the usage screen of the ipod it tracks cellular data. As of this morning it said 350k sent / 4mb downloaded

Telstra sent me a message saying that i've used 80% of my data pack. WTF ! According to telstra its right and that the iphone downloads alot of data in the background and they are telling me to get a higher data pack!!

I decided to to tell them to turn my data off all together, they didn't want to do it but agreed in the end. My next call is to apple and i'm going to check the actual usage through them too.

Anyone else have a similar experience ?

Regards
Vipster

what size is the $29 data pack? 80mb?

apple won't be able to tell you anything about your data usage.

are you checking for mail every 15min?
(lowering this might help to reduce data usage)
do you have wi-fi enabled, and setup on your iphone?
(this would reduce your telstra data usage greatly!)

Telstra sent me a message saying that i've used 80% of my data pack. WTF ! According to telstra its right and that the iphone downloads alot of data in the background and they are telling me to get a higher data pack!!

Could it possibly due to the 80MB browse plus package hasn't been added into your account?
Thus, the 80% is for the 5MB initial data included?

atleast they called you

(why would you be on telstra...?!)

The iPhone's background downloads appear in its data counter. The counter is accurate.

Are you sure your data pack has been setup correctly? 4MB is 80% of the 5MB Telstra includes with all their iPhone plans. Perhaps that is what the message refers to.

i would say that your Data pack has not been enabled properly. Create an account at telstra.com and there you can check your data allowance and usage. You wil also be able to see whats been allocated to your account.

Yes the iPhone does chew up a lot of data so you do have to be careful. I dont think the Hel$tra data allowance is anywhere near enough and i think a lot of people are going to get into trouble. If you do just basic emails then the 80meg allowance willbe enough, but if you do any more you will have to keep an eye on it.

I would say that either a) your data pak hasnt been enabled or b) telstra's usage meter for iPhones is as fucked as it is for BigPong Cable.

I have also been told by a telstra shop that they expect alot of people to be caught by what they describe as iPhone downloading data all the time in the background...that was news to me - i was not sure so didnt argue.

I would have thought iPhone just downloaded data when you web surfed, emailed or used another type of web app?

Occam's razor favours this explanation.

Your 80MB pack was not activated yet.

For the most part, yes, but if you tell it to check your email periodically then it's going to use data even when you're not interacting with it.

Same goes for any other periodic checks and push data.

There are going to be a lot of very unhappy Telstra users in one months time...

And Optus customers are going to parade around saying "I told you so"

I had exactly the same issue, and spent 1 hour talking to Telstra this morning.

In my case, my iPhone said I have sent / received about 2MB of data since I got the phone on Friday. However, Telstra's data use info on their website said I have used 83% of my $29 data pack (which should give me about 81MB quota).

This is what I found:
My account cycle finishes in 2 days, which means I had only 7 days remaining in my current billing cycle when I purchased the data pack. Since their data pack works according to your billing cycle, you are allocated a smaller quota and get charged proportionately less for the first month.

The data use information on the Telstra website seems to be based on the remaining quota, with the data usage and spent quota percentage calculated backwards (against full quota, not the actual reduced quota for the initial month).

I was told I should still have 12MB to go for today and tomorrow, before the new billing starts on Friday.

Now, I am still slightly worried about it, but I am going to wait until Friday and see how the day's data use stats show up at the end of the day.

BTW, when you live outside a handful of large cities, Telstra is really the only option. So don't bag out those like myself who had to sign up with them.

(And sorry if my post is too confusing. English is not my first language.)

I think we already are... Sorry about it.

From the looks of the threads on how much data people have used so far the minimum "reasonable" amount per month for people who actually want to use their iPhones fully will be about 250MB/month.

In Tassy (and some other parts) they are the only 3G provider might be one reason.