Text messages more expensive than sending data from space

Astronomically expensive

16 May 2008 10:10 GMT / By Katie Scott

We are getting ripped off by phone companies over text messages.

A British scientist has released a report that claims that it is more expensive to send a text to your mate than it is for data to be sent from the Hubble Space telescope.

Dr Nigel Bannister, a space scientist at the University of Leicester, states: "Mobile phone text costs are astronomical".

In fact, text messages can be charged at anything between 4 and 42 times as expensive as talking to Hubble.

Here's the science bit: "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".

Did you get all of that?

The chaps over at NASA said that it costs around £8.85 per MB to get information from Hubble, which is a generous guestimation.

So the conclusion - we're all complete space cadets for paying so much for our texts.

Full tags

Phones, SMS, Statistics