The recent increase in the price of smartphone data plans is related to what is happening in the industry. This is not 2005, it is almost 2011. US Cellular could have gone the route which AT&T recently took, offering 200MB for $15, or 2GB for $25. Remember, the more data used, the greater the cost to the provider. In the past, smartphones were mostly used by business customers for communications purposes. The current explosion in use by consumers uses far more data, and therefore far more resources. To keep up with this, providers are having to rebuild their networks for the increased capacity.