Thinking about upgrading to a 4G phone? Prepare to pay more. Before you know it, those 2-gigabyte data caps your carrier put in place just aren't going to cut it.
The average American will use 6.2 GB of data on their mobile devices each month in 2017, according to the latest annual Visual Networking Index released by Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500). To put that into context, Americans used just 752 MB Americans on average last year.If data plans stay the same five years down the road, the average user's smartphone bill could grow by $40 a month.
The wide-spread roll-out of 4G, the lightning-fast wireless networks that all four of the major carriers are in the process of deploying across the country, is expected to be the main culprit. 4G is capable of speeds comparable to your home broadband service, and it's roughly 10 times faster than 3G. By 2017, Cisco predicts that the average smartphone connection speed will grow more than three-fold.