Text Costs More Than Hubble Data

Think texting is cheap? Think again. The University of Leicester’s Dr. Nigel Bannister points out that the cost of SMS is, quite literally, astronomical.

“The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.

“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 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 per MB - or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”

Now you know why cellular networks keep kids addicted to SMS while dragging their feet on data services. They want to keep customers paying more for less.

(Phones via Mauro. Hubble via Cambridge.)