A reader wanted to know if home Wifi was tied to their cellular plan. “Just a quick question about phones. If you use wifi in your home and have Verizon as your carrier, is it still possible to go over your usage? Is there a way to make sure your phone is not using the usage part from Verizon. Hope this makes sense. It is for our Daughter. She says when she uses the Wifi she is not using anything else so should not go over but has. So just curious.”
I suspect your daughter is exactly right. When you log onto home WiFi with your phone, you aren’t using up any of your cellular plan minutes. Unless you are using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot. I’m guessing you have a home plan with Verizon and also a separate plan for your phone.
If your daughter is making phone calls over the 3G or 4G connection, that is coming out of whatever carrier her phone is signed up with. But if she’s an adult with her own phone, it wouldn’t come out of yours. If she uses the WiFi connection to use messaging apps, surf the net, or watch a movie, it would not be subtracted from your mobile data plan.
Home Internet does usually have a data cap, but it’s hard to go over unless you’re downloading massive amounts of data. One person engaging in normal Internet activity isn’t really going to make that much of a difference to the total.
And don’t worry, there’s no way that your router is going to somehow get confused and charge your phone plan for using it.
Verizon offers several tools for monitoring your usage of mobile data plans and talk or text menus. You can click here to learn all about them.
~ Cynthia
I have experienced data loss at home. If the mobile data is ON and the wifi goes down, the phone will use the data. I have DSL and it happened several times. I keep the mobile OFF unless needed away from home.
I don’t have a smartphone, but I do have a mobile (cell) hotspot. We have cable Internet at home, with home WiFi network. All our devices are set to prefer connecting via cable. However, there’s an occasional goof, say, if tablet is already connected to hotspot on arrival home. It won’t reconnect unless I tell it to. I sometimes carry the hotspot with me, if I’m going to be at a location where I don’t know whether WiFi is provided. Also, I use it for backup if the cable is out (too frequent for what it costs). So, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on the connection. I try to remember to turn it off if I’m not using it. Keeps me from connecting by mistake and from running down the battery for nothing.
It is also possible for your phone to lose connectivity to your wi-fi and then it will revert to using it’s plan data. My wife’s phone does this occasionally, I have never been able to figure out why. I just have her turn off wi-fi on her phone wait a few seconds and turn wi-fi back on and it reconnects. You need to look for the wi-fi symbol to make sure it is using wi-fi.
If you have a router range limitation as I do you can inadvertently use your phone or ipad in the other end of the house and not be connected to the wi-fi. I have yet to find an extender that solves this problem for me.