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 o

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."