jason

Slashdot | SMS 4x More Expensive Than Data From Hubble

“Physorg has a paper comparing the cost of text messaging versus the cost of getting data from Hubble Space Telescope. From the article: ‘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 [$732.95] per MB — or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.” “Hubble is by no means a cheap mission — but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical!”"

I’ve always thought that cellphones and SMS were a total conjob to make you pay for what has cost me nothing since the late 80s. And according to “Space scientist says texting is four times more expensive than receiving scientific data from space” it is true. All this instant messaging vs email, the whole us vs them millenials thing about old and new tech has been problematic for me. I can send a letter around the world for 0.85 euro. An email costs me nothing. An sms costs me $0.15 for whatever number of characters my local contract allows. You tell me. Is someone being conned or what? Post office is cheaper than SMS. And it doesn’t matter how fast your drivel arrives.