Verizon WiFi issues

[olllotj]

We had the exact same problem and tried everything we could to fix data usage with our computer and iPad but never saw any difference in usage with the verizon jet pack. We spent countless hours on the phone with verizon and only ended up more frustrated because they did not help and continued to tell us it was our fault. We live in the country wheee no one else would be tapping into our service and we have no other options than cell company jet packs. Luckily my father in law had a sprint jet pack that was grandfathered in to unlimited data usage and he let us borrow it for a few months. We used everything the same as usual and didn't try to be careful about our usage since it was unlimited and guess what? We were only using 2-3 gigs a month. With verizon, we chewed through 10 gigs in the first day of the month when we first got it and then we had to shut it off and not use it so we wouldn't have to pay overage charges. Same thing happened the second month. After that we didn't use it at all and turned it off permanently but continued to pay for it every month until we had enough and cancelled the jet pack and our cell phone plans and transferred everything over to sprint. Now we don't have to worry anymore. The coverage isn't quite as good, but at least we aren't being over charged on our data usage and don't have to worry about being charged overage fees. Much better working with an honest company with good customer service.

 

[newbury]

Eddie it reads like a potential security problem.

As full admin look for recently created files. Your computers might have been compromised and you could be serving up bad stuff without knowing it.

 

[s219]

I doubt the iPads would be burning up data like that, but you can turn off all the auto updates to make sure. And look through your apps to make sure none of them would be using network in the background.

If you have any Windows computers that use the WiFi, give them a serious look. There are many things they could be doing that would cause this, including having a virus or trojan running. They are the internet security equivalent of walking around with your pants down around your ankles.

 

[MossRoad]

My house is 800 feet from the road and my closest neighbor is half a mile away. The next closest house is over a mile away. I don't think anybody is steeling data. Heck, I can't even connect on it if I'm out in the yard with my mini Ipad. Karen has a regular Ipad and she has a lot better luck connecting to it. Both of us keep them in airplane mode when we are just reading on them or not using them. She uses hers more then I do, and it's possible that she might forget to turn it back to airplane mode when she isn't using it, but I find it impossible to believe that happens very often. This is almost daily when the data spikes at half a gig or more. Times vary from 3 in the afternoon when we are both at work, to 2 am when we are asleep and in the early afternoon when we are almost home, like 4:30pm

When we are online, our usage is between 100 to 200 with an occasional 300 megabyte day. We don't watch movies, but from time to time will watch a youtube video. That might happen once a month, and it might be for half an hour worth of videos, so that's easy to account for.

Karen has and Iphone 6, I have a Samsung 6 phone. Both have their own data plans and rarely break a gig for the month.

I do have smart TV, but we've never tried to download a movie onto it. Do they do anything with wifi on their own?

Eddie

Just because your phones have their own data plan doesn't mean they aren't using the WIFI in your house. Most cell phones will try to use WIFI instead of the data over cell signal by default if the WIFI is enabled on the phone. As an experiment, turn off the WIFI on your phones for a couple days and see what happens.

 

[forgeblast]

We had one of the jetpacks or something like that..., I would use it for selling at craft fairs when i needed to run a credit card. We ended up getting a home network extended from verizon (free!)and use the wifi off our dsl so we stopped using it.

 

[kidr]

Same problem here. We used to average 3 gigs a month. suddenly overnite we use 2 to 3 gigs. Always shut the box off when not in use. At one point we reached 4.6 and the counter froze for week. WTF. The subscription runs out this month and I won't renew.
What plans do people have that enables them to download movies and play games online? I can't even use youtube.

 

[Dutch445]

something could be doing a backup to the cloud,
i had a google account start doing that and burned a bunch
of data so i was able to turn that sync off,

there was a movie about that, very funny!
(private video uploaded from a couple's tablet to several others thru the cloud)

 

[Soundguy]

Here's my story on the situation.

I work in a slightly remote area, no dsl for internet is available. We have been using 2 broadband cards for 2 PC's at work for a few years, but sprint suddenly raised their prices from affordable to way-crazy prices.

For a few days i limped along at work using my smartphone as a hotspot but my service is ATT and i get 1 bar if the phone is on top of my book shelf.. 0 bars on my desk, and 2 bars ont he bookshelf if the stars line up correctly... so that wasn't an option.

Picked up a Straight talk Unimax hotspot at walmart. It is a pay as you go deal, it uses the verizon network. I picked that as another worker has vz and gets 4 bars of signal... plus the straight talk is about 20% cheaper than the vz plan.

According to data usage from looking at a few years of sprint bills, our 2 office computers used about 1 gig each, per month. thus a 4 gig plan for 2m was ideal. Got that. didn't make it 2m.. made it more like 6-7 weeks. ok.. no problem.. might be somebody put their smart phone on the system, i know the office manager brought in her nook tablet. So the next renewal i got the 5 gig plan. still can fall short.

If you go intot he control page of the hotspot using a web browser, you can see exactly who is logged in. While our password is not huge.. it is a password, so no one can use our data by just signing on like an open connection. I've never seen anyone logged into the hotspot other than our office laptops and a office workers tablet or phone.. yet, we too would notice huge data usage.

A couple ideas came to mind. Some phones will backup to cloud using wifi vs data plan. i know mine will. and if you take lots of pics or vids.. that's alot of data over time. also updates.. especially win 8 devices when they get updates.. that can be huge.

Anyway. we have now experemented with turning the hotspot off at the end of the day at work and turning back on when we need it. this is the 3rd month of using it so i'm going to see what that does for us. in the end we are still saving about 3 times as much vs the price those broadband cards went to from sprint.

 

[Pixguy]

Another option is to change the password on the wireless router/jetpack and only "give" it to the tablets you want, preventing any phones being able to access the hotspot.

 

[Soundguy]

once you give it to one person.. everyone in the office is gonna have it. IE. if the paswword is available to a guy's tablet in the back.. you know his cell phone is gonna have it too.