The cost of texting
As if we needed another reason to hate mobile phone companies, Nigel Bannister, from the University of Leicester, has worked out that it costs four times as much to send a text message from a mobile phone as it does to transmit scientific data into outer space from the Hubble Telescope.
Four times as much!
Here's how Nigel worked it out:
“The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is about 10 cents.
There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte.
At around 10 cents each, that’s [$734] per MB - or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs [of $166 per megabyte].”
posted by Stan Lee at 12:14 pm
3 Comments:
Wonder if Hubble offer pre-paid contracts?
Haha, I sent this fact round to a few people at work the other week (I know, lucky them.)
I guess I was just amazed after seeing the TV show about how the mobile networks rip us all off.
Incredible.
And a head of Vodafone (forget his name - he must get that a lot) called texting the pureset form of profit ever invented.
C*nts.
And these are the people controlling our access to data in the decades to come.
The telcos must be kicking themselves that they never put a price on emails.
Imagine if they'd 10c an email back in the day.
Nobody would have complained about it when compared to the price of an envelope and stamp.
Makes you wonder if they're getting their revenge via txt.
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