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.

Comments

Apple users

[danbob999]

aren't they used to pay more anyways?

Good to know, thanks

[Spy Handler]

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.

Question...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

Why?

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Why?

[Spy Handler]

Why? I'm leaving it on because it's damn useful.

Yes it's useful. But what happens when you're sitting at home, watching Netflix or Youtube on your phone, and your wifi router craps out? I'm thinking it might automatically switch to cellular without me knowing about it, and there goes my 4 GB for the month.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it useful to disable apps like Netflix from using the cellular network. Settings > Cellular, toggle it off.

Re:Why?

[ls671]

Well, you should notice, I don't see how netflix could automagically start streaming to your new IP address, so most likely, you will have to restart the stream from the beginning. This makes the following sentence from TFS a bunch of mumbo jumbo:

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.

It will get interrupted anyway...

Re:Why?

[SuperKendall]

If your WiFi router turns off any cellular device will switch over. At home the signal is never weak enough that it would have to switch.

If the WiFi is just gone, then apps that aren't allowed to use cellular network (Netflix being one of this) will simply stop.

I see very little downside for a lot of day-to-day usability benefit.

Re:Why?

[BasilBrush]

I don't see how netflix could automagically start streaming to your new IP address, so most likely, you will have to restart the stream from the beginning.

You might not understand how, but that's EXACTLY what this does transparently. It's one of the use cases - streaming a video, moving away from the WiFi, and the stream continues transparently.

Possibly you don't realise that just because it's streaming doesn't mean it isn't being delivered in packets. And packets can be re-routed and resent.

You might not be used to being able to swap and change like this on your existing phone. But that's the point, this is a new feature that other OSs don't do as yet.

As I understand it the difference is that as soon as the WiFi signal is seen to be failing the request for a packet is send straight away via Cellular. And whichever comes back first will get used. The WiFi will eventually properly time out, but starting to use Cellular doesn't have to wait for that. The details might vary slightly from this, but that's the essence.

Re:Why?

[harperska]

Yep. The iPhone has always seamlessly jumped from wifi to cellular when the wifi drops. All this does is improve the user experience as previously it would default to wifi if it could see the network at all, resulting in degraded service. This new feature will only cost you "hundreds of dollars" if you are generally in the habit of watching netflix sitting in your car parked at the curb outside your house. You know, the times when you wouldn't want to be on wifi anyway because you are close enough to see the network, but not close enough to get a good signal, so your browsing experience feels like 1998.

Re: Why?

[thecombatwombat]

Most streaming video these days is over HTTP, divided up into many small chunks sent over HTTP. I'm pretty sure on iOS, even Netflix does Apple's HLS (a protocol, not a service Apple sits in the middle of) which was designed to make exactly this (among other things) work. I believe YouTube and Netflix both do DASH as well, which also makes this work.

What it comes down to is this: Netflix doesn't start "automagically streaming to your new IP address." The video is divided up into many small requests, and your device starts making those requests from a new IP address.

Re:Why?

[Dog-Cow]

If you miss your flight because your phone isn't on a usable network, you, quite frankly, deserved to miss that flight.

Already on Android

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Already on Android

[ethan961]

Yeah, I've been quite happy with this feature. Usually, if Android temporarily avoids the network, you weren't going to be able to use that network anyways. If you don't want Netflix using mobile data, restricting it from using mobile data would be wise. Before this feature was in Android, I more frequently found myself attempting to use a poor network, turning off Wi-Fi to use mobile internet, and forgetting to turn it back on. For this reason, this feature has saved me more data than it has used needlessly.

2015...

[gatfirls]

...and people still have to deal with metered internet usage.

Pitiful.

Just price it in (it already is) and be done with it. Jeez.

Doesn't it already?

[gnu-sucks]

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?

Re:Doesn't it already?

[BasilBrush]

It covers the time when you walk away from WiFi and the phone can still see the WiFi, but data packets are failing. And it does so transparently and without waiting for (longish) time out.

So there's no failed page load or dropped video on iOS9 like there would be on iOS8 or any other mobile OS.

There's 2 places I consistently get hit with that. My work car park, and this one particular bit of road where there's a WiFi network on a known cloud service. The work car park one is particularly annoying because I usually want to do something on the phone as I leave work.

It's the feature I'm most looking forward to when I get a 6s.

Re:Doesn't it already?

[I'm not god any more]

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?

Yes, that's what I thought. I had expected this feature to be "ignore crappy wifi that has no route to the internet". I'm disappointed that it's something else. I loath the TWCWiFi around town, some spots work and others turn the phone into a useless brick. All the TCSWiFi spots have the same ID, so the phone happily hooks up to it whenever it sees it - even when the router has no route to the internet. Lame!

Oh, it's never a surprise

[bughunter]

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.