I thought you'd enjoy this article, Lar...
http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html
> Space scientist says texting is four times more expensive than receiving
> scientific data from space"
>
> A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending
> texts via mobile phones
> works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble
> Space Telescope.
>
>
> Dr Nigel Bannister's calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches
> programme "The
> Mobile Phone Rip-Off".
>
>
> He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble - and
> compared that
> with the 5p cost of sending a text.
>
> He said: "The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive
> than transmitting data
> from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.
>
> "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 - or about 4.4 times more expensive than the 'most
> pessimistic' estimate
> for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs..."
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