I highly doubt that. The piece links to [1] which in turn cites [2].
In [2] "Mobile-broadband prices are collected from the operator with the largest market share in the country", "prices applying to the largest city (in terms of population) or to the capital city are used", and a the 500MB plans are ones that include voice and text.
Moreover, the reported prices include taxes; while including taxes is necessary to accurately reflect the cost to consumers, it does not give insight into weather or not carriers are "gouging" consumers, which is what the RWW piece alleges.
AT&T charges $65 for unlimited talk and text and 2GB of data [3], Verizon $60 with 1GB [4], T-Mobile $40 with 500MB [5], Sprint $55 with 1GB [6].
I won't get into prepaid plans and/or MVNOs exhaustively, but for instance, Aio (AT&T's own MVNO) charges $35 for unlimited talk and text with 500MB of unthrottled data if you enable auto-pay [7].
According to a 2011 report [8], the average tax rate is 16.26%, which would still only bring the most expensive plan I mentioned (AT&T's) to $75.57.
Based on that, unless there is a very large number of consumers on old plans that have not been brought down to current prices (and I'm not sure if that even happens), I highly doubt that $85 figure.
[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/10/daily-c... [2] http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/publication... (page 112) [3] https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html [4] https://www.verizonwireless.com/wcms/consumer/shop/shop-data... [5] http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html [6] https://www.sprint.com/landings/framily/?INTNAV=ATG:HE:Frami... [7] https://www.aiowireless.com/shop/plans.html [8] http://taxfoundation.org/article/states-target-cell-phones-s...