Patent ID: 8478233

Claim:
A mobile computing device comprising, an application network use metric monitoring agent adapted to determine an amount a network metric is used by one or more mobile computing device applications, wherein the network metric comprises a real-time bandwidth data rate; a network plan interface adapted to determine a monetary cost associated with the network metric used by the one or more mobile computing device applications; a background agent comprising a background process adapted to regulate data sent to and from the one or more mobile computing device applications, the data being regulated dependent upon a percentage of the real-time bandwidth data rate being used by the one or more mobile computing device applications; and a user interface, wherein the user-interface, displays the monetary cost associated with the bandwidth data rate for the one or more mobile computing device applications; and provides one or more real-time adjustable bandwidth data rate usage settings for a plurality of features of the one or more mobile computing device applications, the one or more real-time adjustable bandwidth data rate usage settings relating to at least one of, the monetary cost associated with the bandwidth, and the percentage of the available bandwidth for the one or more networks.