'Push' Functions While Roaming

[Phase4]

Hi All

New poster, but got a bit of a query.

During a couple of trips from Australia to New Zealand recently, my wife and I both went 'roaming' with our carrier (Virgin Mobile Australia).

My wife has a Galaxy S, I have the Galaxy S2. Before we went roaming, we did our research and knew that we had to turn off data roaming if we didn't want to incur massive charges.

For both of our trips we had the data roaming disabled on our phones for the majority of the trips. On the last trip, my wife had her phone off for most of the time.

Despite having our phones (theoretically) disconnected from data roaming ... we got whacked with some serious bills in the next billing cycles.

When looking back, I've noticed that my wife's phone was almost continuously tapping into the internet. On our billing it is saying 'NZ Vodafone ---> Virgininternet. Each hit on the net ranges from approx 3kb up to 100kb, and the hits were occuring approx every 5 minutes.

My question (which Virgin have not been able to answer sufficiently) is "If data roaming is turned off on my phone, which is supposed to mean NO internet connection ... why are the phones still connecting to the internet?"

I know of push functions for various apps (e.g. Facebook updates) ... but unless we connected to the local internet or wifi, we never recieved any updates fromfAcebook or similar apps. (We don't have many apps at all).

It's all very confusing ... and we've got another big bill on the way (will find out in 3 days where the damage has come from).

Any answers/theories to this would be greatly appreciated.

Phase4

 

[mikedt]

Hi All

New poster, but got a bit of a query.

During a couple of trips from Australia to New Zealand recently, my wife and I both went 'roaming' with our carrier (Virgin Mobile Australia).

My wife has a Galaxy S, I have the Galaxy S2. Before we went roaming, we did our research and knew that we had to turn off data roaming if we didn't want to incur massive charges.

For both of our trips we had the data roaming disabled on our phones for the majority of the trips. On the last trip, my wife had her phone off for most of the time.

So off most and majority of the time, but not all the time while you where roaming abroad? Do you know how much data might have been consumed while your phones where data roaming?

 

[Phase4]

Hi Mikedt

An example.

Before we even left the airport after arriving in NZ, we both reset our phones to find a local carrier. At the same time we disabled the Data roaming ... yet the bill shows the phones actively hitting the internet even while data roaming was theoretically off.

The first bill we received was 80 pages long and shows the phones were hitting the internet 24/7 for the first few days ... even while we were asleep!

The only time we went into data roaming was to check emails etc when away from wifi ... and that was only for 10-15 minutes max. We can see those hits on our bill, and there's no complaint there.

My other thought is that the phones might have been determining location via google maps, cell tower location etc. But a) Does that consuem bandwidth, and b) should it even work if the data roaming is disabled?

Hope this info helps.