What does it mean that Verizon will be charging (like AT&T) more for data usage?  It means that if you use your smartphone for a lot of surfing the web, applications, streaming movies and music, get ready to pay a lot more and you’d better understand how much data usage you require.  That will help you determine which plan to select.   American broadband providers have been less than willing to invest in their infrastructure to handle increased traffic demands. Instead they are increasing costs rather than bandwidth.

What’s a gigabyte?  It varies depending upon what you’re sending, but a gigabyte is approx 500 to 1000 webpages or  approx 300 fullsize camera phone images that have been emailed (more if resized) or streaming 10 hours of low quality audio.

How to keep costs down? Setup your smartphone for automatic recognition of Wifi – most of us use Wifi at home, work and in familiar places like restaurants where it’s generally free.  By setting your phone to automatically recognize Wifi hotspots, you can avoid carrier charges.

To track your data: Download a data meter; “DataMan” for iPads and iPhones is $1.99; Verizon offers a free “My Verizon” application; Most Android apps offer a widget so you can see and check your data usage.

Watch your limits! The fees are high – $10 per gigabyte over your monthly limit for most data plans and as high as $133-$1,990 per gigabyte on the lowest data plans.