This is one of the stranger assumptions made about text messaging pricing. Via the NY Times The Lede Blog.
"Nigel Bannister, a space scientist at the University of Leicester in Britain, has concluded that sending a text message costs at least four times as much as transmitting scientific data from the Hubble telescope."
Dr Nigel Bannisters calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches program 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.
