my situation seems to be the other way around. My usage on the iPhone shows around 300mb. The virgin website shows I've only used around 30mb. Ive only had the phone since 11th aug. The 300mb did appear around the time I downloaded the iPhone update but I'm sure I did that through iTunes and why hasn't virgin registered it.

I am positive my data usage meter said I have used about 54MB in the first month. But my OPTUS statement came in and said I'd used 88MB. I know it's not very accurate, but it's pretty deceptive. Either way, I doubt I'll go through my 500MB limit per month.

well my iPhone suggests I have used approx 19mb in total. Telstra's website suggests its 25mb, and the table and graph numbers add up. So I am not sure which to trust right now. I think I'll reset my counts next billing cycle and see what happens.

I'm with Telstra.

iPhone says 12.6 MB (total).

Telstra website says - total of 25,777kB (!!!!!) What the $#@%!!

But then, it lists a table of usage by date/occasion - my calculator widget gives me a total of 17,389kB.

Who's lying?

I've emailed Telstra (bloody hopeless) - twice, and they just send back what looks like a standard reply, and for me to contact 125111 (at my cost and time) to discuss further. They won't even explain why on the same Data Usage webpage, the total usage listed is so different to the sum of individual session usage.

alright, now I am really puzzled. my iPhone usage is now saying I have done a total of 12.5mb - this is down on yesterday's figure. This usage counter is not instilling confidence in me I am afraid.

I would strongly urge that the data usage meter on the iPhone is merely an "indicator" of data usage. I would not take it as Gospel.

Today, after 45 mins on the phone, I finally managed to get onto Telstra's secret 'Wireless Data Support' people and spoke to someone who knew what they were talking about, but . . . they can't explain it either, and have logged it as a fault. I'll hear back from them in about a week.

Like many I have noted that Telstra has a problem measuring data usage.

In the month 21/7 to 21/8, my billing cycle, on their data usage display site, Telstra claimed that I had used 150Mb of data.

When I added up the individual data lines in the table, the total was 97MB and at that time my iPhone reported a 47Mb total usage.

If I included the lines that Telstra did not show on the Data Usage screens but did include on my bill, the total was 113MB. These were entries from the beginning of the month.

In the same table of data, Telstra reports the number of minutes connected. Totaling these minutes showed that in the 30/31 days of the bill, I had used 43 days of minutes!

Now it seems to me if Telstra cannot measure the time connected, what hope do they have of measuring the bytes.

I have had bad experiences in the past with Telstra Bugpond charging for excess data over a 5GB cap that was in place. I was getting regularly charged for over usage by up to a GB. Since changing to iinet, I have rarely exceeded 4.5GB and never over 5 and this is now over two years. I have not changed my usage patterns, I move data not movies or music

It would seem to me that some positive action is necessary to get Telstra to improve their performance. They will deny problems and it will only be with a volume of complaints, to the Ombudsman probably, that can get the problem fixed.

I have anecdotal evidence that the iPhone metering is accurate. I would like to get some hard evidence.

Well I have anecdotal evidence now that the iPhones usage meter seems to get affected by giving the phone a power cycle. It occurred to me I had no problems with the meter until I did my first power cycle.

What I am thinking hypothetically is that the actual usage isn't written to flash until (hypothetically) midnight. So if you power cycle during the day, you lose that days worth of data usage stats.

Either way, I have way more faith in the Telstra mobile data usage snapshot than I do the iPhone.

I don't think it's got anything to do with faith.

The Telstra mobile data usage numbers are what you'll get charged by, whether they are right or wrong. There's no way of telling or confirming what the actual usage was.