Despite some recent company efforts to help pay for customers' phone bills through promotions and subscription programs, the telecommunication industry largely relies on customers using more phone data each year — through new applications and innovations — to keep its sales growing, according to The Wall Street Journal. And this is no more apparent than when you see how cell phone bills have risen since the dawn of the smartphone.

Based on data from the Labor Department charted for us by BI Intelligence, US households are spending 50% more on their phone bills than they did in 2007, the year the iPhone launched and Google introduced the Android operating system for mobile devices. Households spent an average of $913 on phone bills in 2013 — and a fifth of those households spent more than $1,400 that year. According to Verizon Wireless, the average monthly phone bill is about $161.24, which is a 3.5% rise from last year.