Astronomical Cost of Sending an SMS.

“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 $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!”"



3 Comments

  1. [...] Who knows what will be in store for the future of the keyword. I think we are hitting an age when advertising and communication will all be done via a wireless connection on mobile PDAs. This is just a personal opinion. I predict that keywords via SMS will have just as much sway as standard keywords. Google Mobile is a great example of this. I love it. It’s such a great resource. Yes, short code keywords will continue to be a great resource but also a great cost for consumers. [...]

  2. [...] Who knows what will be in store for the future of the keyword. I think we are hitting an age when advertising and communication will all be done via a wireless connection on mobile PDAs. This is just a personal opinion. I predict that keywords via SMS will have just as much sway as standard keywords. Google Mobile is a great example of this. I love it. It’s such a great resource. Yes, short code keywords will continue to be a great resource but also a great cost for consumers. [...]

  3. [...] 4. Texting isn’t free. In fact texting is quite expensive.  [...]

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