Consumer Cellular (CC) A month ago, I was dinged for using 1.27GB of data - of which 900mb of it was used on a weekday at precisely 6am. Here's the deal: I've never used more than 330mb in an entire month - EVER - and I was sleeping from 3am to about 10am, AND - my phone is connected to WiFi - and my WiFi never went down during this time, or for the week, for that matter. My phone shows my browser used 1.15gb of data for that month - but I've never watched any movies, videos or live events, but as I said, I was sleeping, and I was connected to WiFi - which I am every time I am home. CC cannot tell me where the data was used, what app, Google Store, etc. but regardless, even if it did app updates, it has NEVER used more than 330mb in any one month, period, it's usually between 205mb and 300mb. I know the overage only cost $5, but it bugs me that I don't think it really happened on my end, I think CC screwed up somewhere? That ever happen to any of you? PS - and yes, I know, most of you use 1-2-3-5GB a month, but I don't.
Consumer Cellular does not have its own network. It uses AT&T as well as T-Mobile's network. They have no visibility into data usage without tracking it down with AT&T and T-Mobile which they are not going to do for $5. We have burps in data usage recording all the time.....which are rarely noticed by customers. In your case .....it was either a data burp (most likely) or a cloned phone (least likely) using your phone's virtual IP address. So.....if you want a real answer switch to T-Mobile who would not have charged you for the overage. A carrier with their own network can look up the data activity and see what was going on that consumed the data.
The $5 doesn't bother me, saying I used a gig of data at 6am when there is no way on earth that happened - bothers me.
Which phone do you have? Both Android and Apple run around 1GB for their updates. For major updates....like IOS 18 it can be 4GBs. Pretty sure it was an operating system not App update. If you check your OS version it will tell you the last time it did an update which may line up with the data usage. As to why it did the update on cellular data and not the wifi......some security updates use cellular data not wifi for the update. The cellular data side has end to end security on it. The update on wifi has security but introduces another network to the update which in some cases can be problematic.
My phone has never used more than 330mb of cell data in any month - EVER - several years. I know when it does system updates because it prompts me to either approve them, or schedule them for a later time. It doesn't just 'do them' without me knowing. I've had a cell phone since we bolted a Motorola 2000X into my car in 1986. Galaxy S20+
Did you check when your OS was last updated? I get you are not happy about this but it was something simple like an OS upgrade or it was a billing mistake.
