A380 Flyer

I recently flew SQ317 LHR-SIN and I *think* I forgot to turn off my iPhone, even though I just put it in my bag and left it up there for the whole flight, untouched.

I today noticed an extra £40 on my bill from data usage and I cannot work out where this came from. Trouble is, my bill is capped at £40 per month of international data (I cannot be billed for more than that each month), so if I have accrued more data usage I won't learn about that until next month.

How much do you think I have wasted my not turning off roaming? I have plenty of apps that probably try to update every now and then (XE Currency updates every 60 seconds lol) so I am fearing the worst - £300? Or am I being a drama queen?

That £40 of data could have been from browsing Twitter at Changi awaiting my luggage. I am charged £6 per MB of data, and I have used apparently 8.64MB on the 16th March. So that's £51 or so.

sparkchaser

There aren't many cell towers at 35,000 feet.

callum9999

If your bill is capped at £40 then surely that's all you pay... I assume it's a UK contract as you're quoting £, in which case I've never heard of one that works in the way you're suggesting. It wouldn't be a cap then - it would just be some sort of bizarre payment plan.

tev9999

Did you check your text messages? Usually you get a "Welcome to our network" text any time you connect while roaming. With international roaming so expensive, it is very easy to rack up a giant bill just in background processes. If your mail and other apps started to sync on approach and during taxi, you could easily use many megabytes.

Last time I drove over to Canada I got the "Welcome to Rogers" text and didn't read beyond the $1/min call rate. Turns out the data charge was $10/MB. An hour later I got another text saying my roaming bill was up to $50 even though my phone was in my pocket, based only on background data.

A380 Flyer

Yep, I got the text on Monday at 07.11 Singapore time. We landed about 07.00 exactly. So by the time I was walking to immigration I go two text messages informing me of the £6 per MB! But to use 8.64MB which totals over £50 means that I must have been using it from the moment we entered Singapore or Malaysian airspace, as there's no way browsing Twitter can total into the MBs. Surely just KBs?

xooz

One easy way to eliminate some of the issue is to configure your applications to only update via wifi. A pretty painless way to avoid some of the data usage

Ocn Vw 1K

Please follow the thread as it moves to the Travel Technology forum. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

HDQDD

By default the iPhone has data roaming turned off...if you turn it on, well, you'll have to deal with the consequences... However, like others have stated, there aren't too many cell towers at FL350.

chgoeditor

Not always. I've roamed through parts of Europe, Africa and Asia without a single welcome message.

gfunkdave

Yeah, it depends on your carrier and settings. Verizon lets you turn off the texts, for example.

Often1

Depending on how much traffic you accumulated enroute, you can eat quite a bit of data, downloading emails with graphics and large attachments. All of those downloads came through, certainly during the time the aircraft was on the ground.

callum9999

Or some of your apps updated.

Though for the second time, I have never heard of a single UK contract that operates in the way you describe. Who is it with? It really makes no sense at all for a contract to operate in that way.

Letitride3c

What is your iCloud storage settings, i.e. photos & videos ? Cloud storage and email with graphics attachment could easily rack up those MB data used. These often run, by default, silently in the background & can use quite a bit of data very quickly.

Can you contact your home carrier and see if they can review the actual usage and pending charges? Roaming rates are usually higher, as you might know.

A380 Flyer

I am with o2.

I have a data cap of 50MB but my bill cannot be more than £40 per month. This supposedly helps me spread out any payments. So if I accumulated £300 worth of data (let's ****** hope not) then I would get £40 extra on my next 10 monthly bills.

Only if I go above 50MB will o2 stop my data services. And at £6 per MB it means I could theoretically be £300 in the red I guess.

Disco Volante

There are if you are flying over land. It's about six miles, which is within range of many cells if there are no obstructions.