Saturday 24 April 2010

The exorbitant cost of text messages

Kiwiblog refers to an NZ Herald article:
  • “According to Nigel Bannister, a scientist at the University of Leicester, sending a text message can be up to four times more expensive than downloading the same amount of data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

    A text message can be 160 characters, equalling 160 bytes (actually 140 bytes – 160 7-bit characters, so the figures that follow are conservative).

    Given that a text message costs roughly 20c to send, some simple arithmetic can be used to work out how much it costs per megabyte:
    $0.20 / 160 = $0.00125 per byte
    $0.00125 x 1024 = $1.28 per kilobyte
    $1.28 x 1024 = $1311 per megabyte
    If we had to pay text message bandwidth rates for home or office internet connections: downloading a 4Mb song would cost $5244.00, a 500Mb TV episode would cost $655,500 and downloading a 1Gb movie, $1,342,464.”

Anyone who uses one of the Smartphones can use peer to peer tasks over their wireless and services like MSN and Ping over their 3G connection for free.

2 comments:

lost in the tropics said...

Hmmm, and to think, it costs me around 11 cents AU to send a text from the Philippines to OZ. Doesn't take a view from outer space to see who's getting ripped off here... and by whom.

MB said...

Are you sure about free stuff over a 3G connection?
See my recent experience with a 3G wireless internet connection at
http://mmvii.blogspot.com/2010/02/mobile-data-cash-cow.html