Posted by Fox on June 19, 2007 at 2:25 PM
The true cost of sending data by SMS text was revealed in Vyke's press release for their new free sms text service. I removed it from my posting because I wanted to highlight it here. Anyway...
Most UK consumers think of text messaging as the cheapest and easiest way to communicate, with a typical cost for a standard 160 character text message of approximately 12p. When you break down that cost and relate it to the actual amount of data being sent, the true cost of texting is revealed. Every character you send in a text message equates to 1 byte of data. When translating this into a per Megabyte cost, it becomes clear just how expensive it is in the UK to send text messages, with consumers paying approximately £750 per MB*.
Comparatively, the US space agency, NASA pays approximately £61.50 per MB to receive data from the Hubble Space Telescope, a sophisticated 11-ton machine located 600km from Earth. This amount includes all personnel, operational, data transmission and data processing costs for the Hubble program and equates to UK mobile users paying 12.3 times more byte for byte than NASA pays to capture and process images of outer space.
*If the user sends exactly 160 characters per SMS (the max allowed and the standard billing increment), then he/she will be sending 160 bytes of data. This means that the user must send 6250 SMS messages to equal one MB (megabyte) of data transfer. 6250 SMS messages (@ 12p per message) = £750 per MB
An interesting nugget of info to bore your friends with today.
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