Monthly plans for new customers start at $30 for 2GB, $50 for 5GB and a whopping $80 for 10GB, which doesn’t even include voice calling. Tethering costs an additional $20 for a measly 2GB extra added to the total data cap and additional $10 for every 1GB thereafter.

Data plans for tablets are also increasing to $30 for 2GB per month, which is $10 more than the current plan that offers half as much data.

Another big thing to note about the change in Verizon’s data pricing is that it doesn’t make any distinction between use of its 3G and 4G wireless networks. So, if you’re new to Verizon it makes sense to opt for a 4G device for a faster internet experience since you’re paying for it either way.

Current customers with a pre-existing unlimited data plan won’t be affected by Verizon’s new pricing structure, according to the report. Thus far, there’s no word on whether current customers can renew unlimited data plans if they choose to upgrade their device after July 7.

Since Verizon is the largest provider of wireless service in the country, many have long since speculated that it would join competitor AT&T in ending “all-you-can-eat” unlimited data plans after adding the iPhone to the list of devices available on the network.

By comparison, AT&T’s monthly data plans start at $15 for 200MB, $25 for 2GB and $45 for 4GB — much cheaper but not much of a deal for people unhappy with the lack of reliable service in larger areas like San Francisco.

Verizon is definitely more confident about its network’s ability to satisfy customers, which is probably why it didn’t bother offering a data plan below 2GB. Yet, it isn’t confident enough to let iPhone owners use the Facetime video chat application over its network.

Michael Abbott (left), VP of Engineering at Twitter, will be joining us for an opening fireside chat on Monday. Michael helps lead Twitter’s mobile efforts, working closely with co-founder Jack Dorsey. As such, he can speak to mobile product development. Yes, he was referenced in that recent article by Fortune about the leadership shuffles and strategy discussions happening at Twitter. He’ll talk with us about Twitter’s investments in HTML5 versus native mobile app development, how he is making sure Twitter’s offering stays consistent across platforms, and also provide insights around Twitter’s roadmap.

Previously, Abbott led Palm’s webOS platform efforts, and before that was general manager of .NET Online Services at Microsoft. Prior to Microsoft, he co-founded Passenger Inc. and led the development of the company’s consumer marketing SAAS platform. He also founded Composite Software, creator of industry-leading enterprise information integration software, where he served as CEO/CTO. Abbott’s talk segues nicely to the chat we’ll have with Keith Rabois of Square, who will talk about how to design for mobile. (Later in the event, we’ve got other presentations from some of the most dynamic private, disruptive companies too, from Dynamics, to Evernote, who will reveal insights about their efforts and mobile user stats.)

To round out Monday evening, we’ll also be joined by Nicola Palmer, VP of Network for Verizon Wireless, the largest wireless carrier in the country. In December 2010, Verizon launched its 4G LTE network, arguably the fastest 4G network in the country. And because she’s in charge of that network, she’ll be giving our audience fresh insight into what Verizon is doing on the LTE front, how it’s ensuring quality and speed (it basically boasts half the latency of 3G), how the explosion of Android devices has affected the network, how things like voice (VoIP) and IMS will be supported soon, and how developers can interface with these technologies. She’ll be providing specific tips about how to design for this new world.

Palmer is responsible for Verizon Wireless’ network support, including overall systems performance and quality assurance. She’s also responsible for implementation of new products and services within the network, along with transport interconnect, supplier management and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Although AT&T didn’t break out how much of the budget it plans to spend in California, it said it will add 200 new cell sites and upgrade 500 existing sites to 3G capability in the Golden State this year on top of 200 new sites and 320 site upgrades in 2009. The carrier has spent $7.3 billion on wireline and wireless networks in California from 2007 to 2009, $1.5 billion of that on wireless in particular, according to a release from AT&T’s office in Sacramento.

The company said its 2010 budget includes a $2 billion increase in capital spending for “wireless and backhaul related to AT&T’s wireless network.” Backhaul refers to the portion of its wireline network that moves wireless voice and data traffic when it’s not flying through the air.

AT&T’s spending seems to be on par with that of rival carrier Verizon Communications, whose capital budget is projected to be $16.8 billion to $17.2 billion, compared to $17 billion in 2009, the company stated in a Jan. 26 earnings release.

The breadth and strength of AT&T’s 3G network has been called into question by a series of ads Verizon has been running on TV and in other media for several months, depicting AT&T’s coverage as sparse compared to Verizon’s. This led to an air war of commercials from each carrier dissing the other’s network and providing actor Luke Wilson with a steady job.

Pressure on AT&T’s wireless network has been building ever since it was picked as the exclusive carrier for Apple’s wildly popular iPhone in 2007. It can expect more pressure once Apple starts selling its new iPad tablet computers, whose 3G version would also run exclusively on AT&T.

Wireless data traffic on the AT&T network has grown more than 5,000 percent over the past three years, the company said, largely attributed to growth in the sale of smartphones, which now account for 40 percent of its postpaid customer base.

Despite the negative publicity about a weak network and dropped calls, AT&T appears to be actively pursuing a build out program.

The deployment of High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology is continuing along with a second AT&T initiative to increase the number of high-speed backhaul connections to cell sites, primarily with fiber-optic connections. In addition, improvements to its 3G network will bring the network closer to offering 4G/LTE broadband technology, offering data speeds 10 times faster than on existing 3G networks. AT&T currently trails Verizon in this race; Verizon anticipates having faster 3G networks up this year, while AT&T said it won’t be ready until 2011.

Verizon smartphone customers will now be able to make unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls, as well as SkypeOut calls to any phone number using Skype’s reduced rates. And of course, Skype mobile will allow users to instant message their Skype friends and view their online status.

The move is clearly a response to Apple’s announcement — but whatever the reason, consumers are winning out. Just a year ago, it would have seemed impossible for mobile carriers to allow VoIP over 3G on smartphones. Now, it’s to be expected. I won’t be surprised if Sprint and T-Mobile make similar announcements soon.

Unlike Apple and AT&T’s announcements allowing VoIP over 3G, Skype is the only VoIP app that’s approved to work on Verizon’s 3G network. This leaves other VoIP applications like Fring out in the cold for now. The move is still a big step for Verizon — a carrier that has traditionally been very restrictive with its network. It’s an important change in the company’s attitude, and it shows that it may further relax 3G restrictions down the line.

The new Skype mobile will be available for Verizon smartphones in March. Initial smartphones that will support the app include the BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones, as well as Droid by Motorola, Droid Eris by HTC and Motorola Devour, according to Verizon.

This slowdown is forcing carriers to consider doing the inevitable: Keep pricing low for basic users, but increase pricing substantially for customers who use too much data — or simply cut off users who abuse the data plans. In other words, get ready to say goodbye to wireless net neutrality. The chart below (sorry, you’ll have to squint) is from a presentation by Shen Donglin, VP, Mobility ZTE Corporation, at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It illustrates how the industry could look like over the next few years: While mobile traffic explodes, carrier revenue barely grows. Consequently, carriers just can’t cover the costs of all these customers using all these great applications on their smart phones. So they’ve got to either offload the traffic to someone else, or they’ve got to cut costs. Really, it boils down to the simple business equation: Profit = Sales – Costs.

Already, you’ve seen AT&T revise its terms of service on some of its new netbooks, prohibiting things like “downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services, customer-initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, Web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices.” It means you may no longer be allowed to stream content from third-party Web sites, such as You Tube, or via applications like Slingbox.

Subscriber growth for AT&T and Verizon has fallen below 10 percent for the first time in five years, to 8.8 percent and 8.7 percent.

While smartphone demand was still growing in the very challenging first quarter, McCormack said carriers will have to subsidize their plans to keep smartphone growth sales humming. Indeed, AT&T is considering cutting the iPhone’s monthly service plan by $10 when Apple introduces the newest version of the smartphone next month, according to Cote Collaborative analyst Michael Cote. He said there’s a “strong possibility” AT&T will cut the iPhone’s entry-level data service plan from $69 per month to $59, reducing the total cost of a two-year contract by $240.

Verizon, which has been shut out from selling the iPhone is also prowling for cool smartphones to sell. We reported earlier that it was courting Android, and indeed we’re seeing new reports that Verizon will launch an Android phone with Motorola. It’s true, this is a growing market, but no one knows how big it will get. In this market, as McCormack also noted, households are looking for cheaper options, including pre-paid (or pay-as-you-go) plans. Increasingly, what once looked like an open prairie of opportunity — endless versions of smartphones leading to endless growth — is now looking more unrealistic.

We’ll be writing more on the net neutrality issue in the coming days.

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Jajah gets shut out of eBay — This was pretty predictable. As reported earlier, Jajah released a button aimed to give small businesses the equivalent of a free 1-800 number. eBay vendors could use it to let customers call them for free from their eBay page. However, eBay owns Skype, a competing service to Jajah, and quickly stripped Jajah’s buttons from the site within 24 hours.

German cell-phone software vendor buys iPhone game maker — The German company, Shape Services, has bought New York-based iPhone Applications List, showing how the iPhone has generated a platform of its own that’s creating quite a bit of excitement, and could eventually rival the iPod ecosystem. There’s an estimated $1 billion in sales annually of iPod add-ons, according to Dow Jones.

Verizon secretly pressuring FCC Chairman to renege on wireless opening? — News reports suggest Verizon is lobbying behind the scenes, perhaps even in violation of FCC rules, to have the FCC water down provisions that would open up the 700 MHz spectrum to competition. The FCC has opened the spectrum to bidders in an auction, where the highest bidder gets to offer services over the spectrum, but must also let other service providers access the spectrum too. Verizon, a carrier worried that regulation would let Google or others encroach on its wireless turf, apparently is seeking to make the FCC ease up on a key requirement: that the winner of the bid (Verizon presumably thinks it can win the bid) must open up devices and applications if they use the spectrum. Now Google is crying foul.

Quote of the day: Facebook advertisers are “selling shovels to other miners” – You’ve got to like the analogy by the New York Times’ Brad Stone in his piece about Facebook. He likens Facebook application hype to the 1849 gold rush: “Some [Facebook] developers report earning tens of thousands of dollars in advertising with the applications they have created. Yet their applications are mostly running ads promoting other Facebook applications — a situation that recalls the earliest Gold Rush miners, who earned a living selling shovels to other miners.” Overall, very few people found significant amounts of gold.

Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer says advertising will make up a quarter the company’s business within a few years — Details here. “Over time, all ad money will go through a digital ad platform,” Mr. Ballmer told a gathering of European ad agencies and clients. “All media goes digital; all advertising goes digital.”

Google remove all ads from its social-networking service, Orkut – This is just the latest sign that social networks are having a much harder time being monetized than people appreciate. Users post pornographic images, and advertisers don’t want anything to do with this. Google said advertising appeared on only 1 percent of Orkut pages. The site is popular in Brazil, but has been accused of containing child pornography among other illicit material. According to research firm comScore Inc., Orkut attracted visits from about 25 million people in August. Perhaps never before has there been such a disjunct between a site’s popularity and such a depressing amount of money that can be made from it.

Research firm Gartner predicts continuing chip-industry slowdown — Already down 4.3 percent from predicted levels, chip equipment orders will stay at their current low levels until late next year, according to Gartner. The research revised capital spending forecasts for the semiconductor industry, trimming off $4.7 billion for a predicted total of $54.6 billion next year. Slowdowns in the chip industry have, in the past, foreboded a slowing of the entire tech industry.

Google’s DoubleClick acquisition may face more hurdles — Not just one, but two committees in the House of Representatives are considering holding hearings over Google’s proposed buyout of DoubleClick. The House Energy and Commerce and House Judiciary committees are reviewing the case, following a hearing last week by the Senate Judiciary’s Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee. The hearings may have been sparked by rivals including Microsoft and Yahoo, who are actively making arguments against the acquisition to Washington’s lawmakers. It’s a good thing for Google that the company has already been busy hiring lawyers and lobbyists in Washington; it’s got some catching up to do.