You know those early termination fees wireless carriers charge? The ones that cost you an arm and a leg to cancel your contract?

If you're a Verizon customer, I hope you have a few arms and legs to spare. Early termination fees are about to go up.

A Verizon memo shows that starting Nov. 15, customers with an "Advanced Device" who want to break their contract will be charged an early termination fee of $350. That's twice the current $175 fee.

The fee will decrease by $10 for every month of service you complete. So after six months, you'll only owe $290 if you decide that Verizon isn't the carrier for you. Also, early reports of the memo don't specify what constitutes an "Advanced Device," but my money's on any smartphone that requires a data plan, including the DROID, which is launching Friday.

The fee is outrageous. Early termination fees are universal across the industry, and they're universally detested by consumers. The carriers argue that these fees are reasonable: They sell phones at a reduced cost in exchange for a two-year contract. If that contract is broken, they recoup their subsidy via the fee.

Fine. If these fees are based on the subsidy, then let's see the data — how much does Verizon pay for, say, a BlackBerry Bold? Even at $175, early termination fees seem way too high to be anything other than punitive. In fact, the average subsidy of a wireless handset in 2008 was $14.33 (see p. 20 of our filing with the FCC), so a $175 fee is already more than 10 times the average subsidy. So what justification could there be for doubling the fee?

A lot of regular smartphone users are going to get caught up in this net, and they won't be happy about it. If you don't want to be doubly penalized for the audacity of switching carriers, buy your smartphones now!