Fascinating comparison from Nigel Bannister at Leicester University (via ShinyShiny)

Text messaging costs four times as much as receiving information from Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope.

It cost £85 to obtain a megabyte of data from Hubble, 595km (370 miles) from Earth, as opposed to sending a 5p text, which works out at about £375 per megabyte.

Scientist Nigel Bannister, of Leicester University, said: ‘Hubble is by no means a cheap mission – but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical.’

If you’re a heavy texter, it’s worth investigating a variety of tariffs to find the one that suits you best. And no matter whether you’re more of a voice, SMS or web user, remember to check every so often with your operator to find out whether you’re able to change your deal - without necessarily increasing your tariff.

For example, as we’ve mentioned before, Vodafone has added 500MB of free data to all pay monthly contracts but, if you’re an existing customer, you need to call to get this added to your current deal, as your operator cannot change terms and conditions of your contract without your approval. So what are you waiting for? Call your operator and see if you can get a deal that suits you better.

Meanwhile, if you’re not interested in browsing, but just want the ultimate el cheapo phone, how about a phone for £13 (that’s $25 USD!) on pay as you go. Not a bad phone to have around, that way you won’t shed a tear when it meets a watery grave in a pint of beer this Summer!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Phone tariffs and costs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.