SMS costs are astronomical

by Craig on May 28th, 2008

Some basic maths have been calculated by some of the greatest minds in our country, They have only just realised that sending Texts cost more per Mb than receiving data from the Hubble Telescope!

The Boffins from the University of Leicester explain their very complicated mathematic problem as so:

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.

Mind boggling mathematics for mere mortals such as you and me!

Nasa say that to send one megabyte of data from the Hubble Telescope to Terra Firma costs only £8.85.

It seems to me that they havent done much research either seeing as every network i know charges 10p+ for their texts. Making the cost of sending texts roughly £748.98. Which means sending text messages is a staggering 82 times more expensive than querying the Hubble Telescope

//Craig

Sauce from the University of Leicester!

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