SMS Ridiculousness: The Space Telescope Transmission Cost Comparison

Early February’s mobile television cover story (part one of a two-part series) discussed (among other things) the economic underpinnings of various services (both voice- and data-centric) offered by cellular providers…the cost-to-provider for a typical service per-use payload, the price charged by the provider to its customers, and (therefore) the profit margin. The data (hopefully) showcased how particularly lucrative SMS (short message service) text messaging was, thereby explaining the substantial degree to which text messaging is ‘pushed’ by the carriers.

A Slashdot discussion thread from a month back paints SMS economics in slightly different terms; the text messaging per-MByte cost-to-consumers is 4.4x the most pessimistic estimates of how much it costs to retrieve data from the Hubble Space Telescope! Keep that factoid in mind the next time you reach for your phone’s alphanumeric keypad; why not just hit the ‘dial’ button, instead?