As data demand climbs, that 95% portion of users in the sub-2GB (3G) and sub-4GB (4G) brackets will theoretically shrink, but this is probably not an immediate game-changer since the net 2011 rate at which data demand rose was a comparably low 9% for the VZW unlimited data subscribers we analyzed. While we did see some seesawing in data demand between quarters within 2011, the fact remains that comparing the first and last quarters of the year suggests the average VZW unlimited subscriber closed out 2011 using only about 9% more data than he or she started the year consuming—from 544.2 MB to 593.2 MB. In other words, that average user probably has a significant way to go until he or she needs a more expensive plan.

We can identify key trends about Smartphone uptake here that point in this direction. Not only are more consumers using Smartphones, as the statistics continually bump a 50% Smartphone market share, but consumers are using their Smartphones more heavily as well: from January to December 2011, median Smartphone data usage increased 136.1%. While average Smartphone data usage across 2011 increased a relatively modest 34.7%, the huge gains at the median suggest that typical users are vastly increasing their device engagement: the real growth in data demand isn’t coming from the extreme data users, but rather from the moderates in the middle.

Following up our big March, in April Team Validas kicked off a New York City media tour to discuss our recent private equity investment from Huntsman and Gay Global Capital with top reporters in finance and tech. The Huntsman and Gay funding news was picked up by VentureBeat as an exclusive story, and our subsequent release about the investment was featured in media sources including Yahoo Finance, Fortune and Wireless Week.

The NYC trip also included some high level business meetings and shooting a mini-movie about our movement surrounding mobile intelligence. We got back to our roots—the founders of Validas, Tom and Todd, are New Jersey guys originally—and we rounded out the incredibly packed week with a Yanks game before heading back to Houston, or as we like to call it, the “Silicon Coast.”

Dropped this week, the latest press release details the recent launch of our VERA engine. At its core, VERA is the interface that sits “on top” of the mobile data, and functions as the portal that allows an end user to access and understand the analytics surrounding their wireless bill—making them a smarter consumer. The release was picked up widely by sources including Yahoo News and Reuters and the headline and VERA’s image appeared on the Times Square jumbotron! Looking ahead, we’re excited to attend the CTIA wireless industry convention in New Orleans this May. VERA will fundamentally change wireless by bringing openness and transparency to all entities involved—carriers, Fortune 500 clients, SMBs and consumers. We see CTIA as an opportunity to introduce VERA to the mobile industry.

Team Validas has also grown by a few heads—we’re thrilled to announce that Scott W. Bradley has joined as our VP of Engineering and Lori Edwards as our Senior Database Administrator/Architect. Lori is a database veteran, having spent over five years at Amadeus Revenue Integrity as a Senior Database Administrator. Scott, previously CTO at Strings Inc., sees joining our team “as a great opportunity to lead the development of innovative solutions in big-data intelligence, to push the envelope in exciting areas such as machine learning and predictive analytics, and to build the next generation of consumer-facing products. The vision of Validas and its founding team is big, hairy and audacious - just the way I like it!”

We found some remarkable results: while average and median Smartphone data consumption appear broadly similar across the rural and urban pockets of America, our numbers do suggest that urbanites use less data on average and slightly more at the median.

So why the disparity? The higher urban median suggests that there is less of a difference between data usage on the high end and low end in urban areas, whereas the higher rural average suggests that there is a more pronounced effect of heavier users bringing up the average in rural areas. Could it be that there are more data hogs per capita in America’s breadbasket than in latte-drinking cities?

So what’s the point? Data usage is increasing at dramatically different rates for different Smartphone users. If the median Smartphone user (consuming 387.4MB in December 2011) continued to increase his usage at the 136.1% 2011 rate, and the average Smartphone user (consuming 604.5MB in December 2011) continued to increase her usage at the 34.7% 2011 rate, both users would consume the same amount of data sometime during 2012! If the pattern continues, the median user will actually pass the average user in data consumption; in this future, rather than “data hogs” pulling up the average, most users will probably soon be bumping the limits of their tiered plans while a comparably few holdout “stingy” data users pull down the average. At the current rates of increase, the median Smartphone user could consume over 7GB of data in certain months before the end of 2014 while the average Smartphone user would probably get by on just 1.5GB.

It’s key to note that these projected possible consumption figures would not necessarily occur each month; as the 2011 consumption chart illustrates, data usage fluctuates sometimes significantly monthly. The important point, however, is that it matters less whether consumption hits a certain high in one month or every month””as long as it hits that number once, the user will need to have a Smartphone plan that can handle that maximum amount of data he or she demands.

So what does this mean? Possibly good news for most consumers since they’re more than likely still far from either the limits of their tiered data plans or the thresholds for throttling if they have unlimited plans. Even the average user in the top 5% can be safe. As you can see (below) the top 5% of data users on Verizon Wireless and AT&T unlimited and tiered plans all average between three and four GB per month–so even the demands of these heavier data users could be met without incurring overages with the $50/5GB option offered by both carriers. And, again, since most users are grouped at the lower end of the spectrum, there is no substantial subset of consumers whose data usage exceeds data plans offered by both carriers.

Still, there is a more complicated side to the story arising from a possible misalignment of the plans currently available with typical usage. Verizon Wireless offers Smartphone customers 2GB, 5GB and 10GB plans and yet the average usage of the top 5% of Verizon Wireless customers, tiered or unlimited, doesn’t exceed 4GB–not even the limit of the middle 5GB data plan offered. When our data at Validas suggests that up to 40% of Verizon Wireless Smartphone customers used less than 50MB monthly in 2011, there is reason to pause when one considers that 50MB is just 2.5% of the 2GB minimum Verizon Wireless data plan. Of course, since data usage continues to rise consumers need room to grow on their data plans–but should lighter, more discounted data plans be offered in the meantime? AT&T apparently thought so and offered an entry-level 300MB data plan, perhaps an acknowledgement that most of its data customers are comparably light users. As data usage continues to evolve, it remains likely that the carriers will continue to grapple to find the optimal way of serving their Smartphone customers à la carte data options.

The question remains, however, why throttling is necessary at all. In other words, are the carriers throttling because of wild and crazy unlimited users hogging enormous bandwidth or are the carriers throttling as essentially a tactic to get grandfathered unlimited users to hurry up and switch to tiered data plans?

As you can see from the graph below, extracted from a sample of over 55,000 2011 cell bills, this does not appear to be an issue of data hogging. When we look at the Top 5% of data users, there is virtually no difference in data consumption between those on unlimited and those on tiered plans, and yet the unlimited consumers are the ones at risk of getting their service turned off. So it’s curious that anyone would think the throttling here represents a serious effort at alleviating network bandwidth issues. After all, Sprint gets by fine maintaining non-throttled unlimited data to its customers.

We pulled the average data usage for AT&T and Verizon Wireless data users (VZW for a point of comparison) for the four quarters of 2011. The sample size was 9,114 AT&T users and 11,650 VZW users. As you can see, while the AT&T usage does trend up into Q4 from Q3 2011 by about 20%, roughly the same increase occurred from Q1 to Q2 2011, so why the 1GB/$5 change now? In other words, while there was a spike in average Q4 AT&T data users’ data usage, we don’t believe it was unique enough in character compared to past increases in data usage to necessitate the 1GB/$5 change.

So, what is Bill Shock? We define Bill Shock, simply, as overage charges on a cell bill. Anyone without an unlimited plan is thus theoretically at risk of domestic and international text, data and voice overages.

How rampant is Bill Shock, and what does it cost consumers? We found overage on about 5 percent of wireless lines that resulted (due to multi-line plans) in over 13 percent of wireless bills getting hammered with overage charges, or Bill Shock. This empirical result is similar but slightly more conservative than the FCC’s recent survey-based conclusion that 17 percent of Americans have experienced Bill Shock. Of the consumers Validas identified as Bill Shock victims, 20 percent experienced overage charges greater than $50 and one percent saw charges exceed $500.

Preventing Bill Shock involves targeting the areas most likely to incur overages. For example, the visual above illustrates that the highest average Bill Shock charges stemmed from international roaming data charges and domestic voice charges. In other words, using data internationally without a proper plan and exceeding your plan’s minutes yield the biggest average Bill Shock charges. Interestingly, both domestically and internationally, texting overages resulted in the lowest average Bill Shock charges, perhaps good news to parents everywhere whose teens’ thumbs rarely leave their phones.

Bill Shock can be devastating. The fact that the average international roaming data charge is over 12 times more than the median, $68.50 versus $5.51, shows that those on the high end of the scale got hit with overage charges so disproportionately large as to drive the average way up. It’s a similar, but tamer, story with domestic voice charges; the average is more than twice the median. Still, with less than 1 in 5 wireless consumers hit by Bill Shock, and an even slimmer minority hit with high charges, a typical consumer without an unlimited plan should vigilantly ensure that voice, data and messaging usage remains within the parameters of the plan. In particular, when travelling internationally, be careful to fully understand your plan when using data. Upload your bill to Validas.com to ensure that your plan fits your usage.