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iOS 9 'Wi-Fi Assist' Could Lead To Huge Wireless Bills
Dave Knott writes: One of the new features introduced in iOS9 is "Wi-Fi Assist." This enables your phone to automatically switch from Wi-Fi to a cellular connection when the Wi-Fi signal is poor. That's helpful if you're in the middle of watching a video or some other task on the internet that you don't want interrupted by spotty Wi-Fi service. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi Assist is enabled by default, which means that users may exceed their data cap without knowing it because their phone is silently switching their data connection from Wi-Fi to cellular.
aren't they used to pay more anyways?
Turning off Wi-fi assist now.
It's located at: Settings -> Cellular -> W-Fi Assist (all the way at the bottom). Yes, it was turned on by default, which I've now disabled.
Note the key phrase from the article: "writes while using the beta...."
Come on people, there's a reason why something is "beta". They can do a lot of tweaking around this, like being much less likely to switch to cell if video is playing...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The carriers really hate that "feature".
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
You're using it wrong.
That's assuming your IOS9 device will connect to WIFI. Won't connect to networks that don't broadcast SSIDs. Mine sure won't. At least I don't have the WPA connection issues some users re reporting.
I have a question about wifi-assist: If it kicks in doesn't it tell the phone wifi is off? I ask because iOS prevents lots of things from happening over a cellular connection. For example: You cannot do a system update, you cannot download apps larger than a certain file size (last I checked it was 50 megabytes), and apps like Netflix have a "don't use cellular" switch. It seems to me that, assuming that those switches aren't bypassed, the likelihood of a ridiculous bill seems minimal.
Pardon my skepticism, I'm one of the grandfathered unlimited customers with shitty wifi at work who is continually annoyed by these artificial limitations. I'd actually benefit from it if Apple went that far out of their way and fucked up that bad.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'm leaving it on because it's damn useful.
When I'm leaving work the phone would grab onto the ever more remote WiFi, creating a kind of dead zone in the parking lot where the WiFi was too weak.
When I'm at an airport with crappy WiFi I'd rather have the phone jump ship.
Or if you auto-join some pay network you used before but don't have an account for at the moment...
All are great cases for why this makes the experience of using the device better.
Shouldn't you just leave it on an monitor data use for cellular to see if it looks like you are using significantly more data? The article is no good in that regard because it's quoting a report from a beta version of iOS9, which may have been using lots more data for all kinds of reasons.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A bigger problem in 9 and 9.0.1 is that you cant turn on and off cellular for any app including app store and itunes if you turn them on they turn them self back off.
Apples saying wait for 9.0.2
80 bucks a month and you can use it.
Really sad fan boy.
Android has had this feature for years and it hasn't killed my bill.
I haven't had much seat time with it but my general impression is unless you have really shitty wireless it won't kick on. And if you have wireless that shitty then perhaps you want it to kick on.
...and people still have to deal with metered internet usage.
Pitiful.
Just price it in (it already is) and be done with it. Jeez.
I hope it's just the data cap and not data roaming on by default as that can cost you $15-$20 a MEG or a the cost of a NEW CAR FOR 1-2GB of data.
sorry, not reading the article. But doesn't an iPhone automatically fallback to cellular data when out of wifi range? I'm pretty sure mine does.
What's new here? Is it faster? More fault-tollerant?
The ...interesting... bit about this, is that you have to scroll WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY down past all the app entitlements to reach this feature.
I smell a rat.
I was wondering how Apple got the big carriers to roll over on no-contract phones.
Methinks we have found an answer. I'll bet there's more "special gifts to the carriers" in there...
users may exceed their data cap without knowing it
That never happens without knowing it on Verizon. I get texts and emails when I reach 75%, 90%, 100% and then at each GB over the limit.
I have a teenage son. I get a lot of these notices.
I can see the fnords!
Ever wanderd on to a shitty public wifi network when you've got full bars of LTE? Or been at home where your internet cut out? Yeah wifi signal is strong but everything stops working. Fucking annoying.
If you're really worried about data iOS lets you control which apps and features can use cel data and which cannot.
good thing i've still got the unlimited data! i KNEW i wasn't just throwing money away!
They blame the phone for ... the carriers lack of coverage and their idiotic idea of charging extra after blowing through the data caps?
I'm not an Apple user, never will be, but isn't this kind of stupid to blame them for the carriers problems?
wireless plan here in the USA. Additionally, AT&T recently increased the throttle cap from 5GB to 22GB. I'm paying $64/month, by the way.
How can you exceed a data cap? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what a data cap is. Where I come from a data cap is implemented on your provider's servers/switches/exchanges, you set the cap via a web interface and it caps your downloads (as in you can no longer download anything) when you have reached X dollars/euros/etc... or Y bytes where X or Y can be set to whatever value you prefer. If the cap is exceeded despite you explicitly setting it to some value its their own damn fault and they have to eat the costs.
If I was into conspiracy theories, I'd wonder if Apple didn't get a payoff by the carriers to implement this, then silently have it as a default.. Then the carriers get a nice uptick in overage charges... Nah, Apple and the carriers wouldn't do such a thing.... Nah.. I can't even say that without laughing my ass off...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I'm paying $50 a month for my unlimited. Plans have gotten cheaper.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
No data plan. It's WiFi or nothing.
Have gnu, will travel.
Have unlimited data
This was the first feature I turned off when I got my rose gold iPhone 6s this past weekend. I typically use about 600MB per month and rarely bumped up against the 1GB on Sprint.
Of course Verizon and AT&T employees are always posting this myth.
It's not a myth. Tmobile has shit coverage. Great for you if you happen to live where they have great coverage but for a lot of other people Tmobile has much worse coverage then verizon etc. it's not a myth.
Of course Verizon and AT&T employees are always posting this myth.
You make it sound like those services don't have their fair share of trouble with things like coverage.
We all have universally agreed that all ISPs, wireless or landlined suck in the US. I think the only ones with any generally positive appeal are Google's and maybe some community built ISPs.
captcha: insolent
And where can others get that from?
Cricket is the discount brand of AT&T and uses the same network at the same quality. $35-$55/month depending on when they throttle the 4G down to 3G.
Personally I have a $100 no throttling ever plan for two people on T-Mobile, although it looks like right now the $50 plan for one is just 1GB before they throttle. Still, T-Mobile has discounts over the course of the year and you can probably pick up something better if you wait.
I'm sure there's others but even if I am bored at work I'm not that bored. Do like 5 minutes of research!
video ads tend to "automatically play" when page loads? I've noticed this for about a year now, on wifi video ads wont auto play. It happens on both my windows and mac machines on all browsers, seemingly. Not sure if there is some sinister plan to gobble up my data....or if the pages simply think my bandwidth is that much faster....
I am a Comcast customer and everyone using their "home gateway" (most customers) are providing free, limited bandwidth access to other Internet customers who are within range. As I walk the dogs I find that I am almost continuously connecting to one house or another. Same when driving around. My phone checks for adequate performance when connecting, but hangs onto the connection even though throughput is about 10 bytes per second. and, even when the signal is lost, it takes about 20 seconds before giving up.
I am forced to turn off WiFi to listen to stream or even get a sports score update. Then I get home and forget to turn on the WiFi and THAT is when I waste a bunch of my data allowance.
As to not noticing the switch-over, streaming apps do have a noticeable "glitch" when moving from WiFi to LTE. It's quite likely that you would notice. The app has to detect the change, open a connection via the LTE address and start the new stream running before the buffer empties... when the low quality can only be detected until the buffer is already shrinking rapidly. There are several tricks apps can use to minimize the delay, but I have yet to find one that does the switch transparently on audio, let alone video.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
Why do have my phone set up to hang onto wifi until it's completely gone and to heavily restrict data use when on cellular? Not because I have a crappy data plan - on the contrary.
It's all about battery life: pushing data across a flakey wifi link still consumes less enery than using [234]G. A function that tries to 'enhance your user experience' at the expense of battery life defeats its purpose, as nothing is as user-experience-killing as a low battery warning.
Android has had this feature for ever... I haven't heard of anybody forgetting to disable it when they don't want it. Also, doesn't iOS come with a bandwidth watcher like Android? My phone shuts off data when I hit 95% of my cap.
No kidding. I looked into them a while ago when I broke a phone still on contract. Good prices, they'd buy me out of my contract, yada, yada, yada....
Talked to a couple coworkers who have T-Mobile and share my 120mile round trip commute. It works great, unless you want a data connection......70% of my commute corridor has no T-Mobile data coverage at all. Don't get me wrong, my AT&T unlimited data coverage often sucks, but it works fine where I spend most of my time.
I think I'll pass on T-Mobile for the time being.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Around me, it's certainly not a myth. I switched from T-Mo to Cricket (AT&T towers) last year, and I noticed a decided improvement in my coverage. I was happy enough with T-Mobile since i don't really make many calls anyway, but there were certain routes where Pandora would drop on T-Mo & the Cricket data is uninterrupted.
and so far this month is has only accounted for about 74mb. Big whoop.
This last week I went shopping for a replacement for my home based 4G internet service. Right now I am with Clear.com using their 4g wi fi modem, I could hook up to eight wireless units to it. The cost is $50 unlimited. I use about 60-70 GB a month. Alas Sprint bought them out and is shutting them down in November. I can not find a home based 4G carrier to replace them. The best I can do is get a hotspot dodad and a data plan of $80 a month for 10 GB. I hope those of you with the real unlimited plans have them grandfathered in. If your new in the market all you can get are data plans.
Yeah sure I have a cap, but what I use it for I have to struggle to make the cap, so I'm good. I have a 10GB cap and I'm really pushing it if I make 8. If you have a small cap, like 1GB or something (do those still exist?) maybe.
Visit any rural area and you can experience the myth for yourself. Sprint too.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
My wii-fi connections are so poor and/or secured that I have never been able to download iOS9 and my current OS will not allow me to use my UNLIMITED cellular connection for downloads. I have an iPhone that has NEVER been able to upgrade itself or to back itself up because of this stupid limitation, which I presume is imposed on me because at&t wants to freeload on other people's bandwidth.