It looks like the US telephone companies are rubbing their hands with glee that Apple is about to announce a new iPhone today. Chetan Sharma, an independent telecommunications analyst who consults for wireless companies warned that every time there was a new generation of iPhone the average data consumption roughly doubles.

Last year, the average mobile customer in the US used 1.4 gigabytes per month. That number is expected to increase more than six-fold, to 9.1 gigabytes per month by 2018. Although T-Mobile forced the other wireless companies to bring down their prices recently, paying for that much data is getting out of hand. Surprisingly the move to mobile has shown how evil the US comms companies really are. AT&T and Verizon, which combined control more than two-thirds of the wireless market in the U.S, no longer offer unlimited data plans.

A two-year contract at either company for 10 gigabytes per month plan starts at $140 a month, not including taxes and other fees.

The thought is that Apple’s phone, which has a larger screen will encourage fanboys to look at more movie content which consumes a ton of data. After all while the rest of the world has been using phablets, Apple fanboys have not because Steve Jobs said they were silly. Now they are allowed to play with them they will think that they are a new thing and will get very moist about what they can do with them. Most of this will jack up their downloading efforts.