Ask HN: what costs more? a 1 kB email or an SMS?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1664369

by dotcoma • 16 years ago

2 9 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Does it cost more or less to GMail to send a 1 kB email compared to what it costs a mobile operator to send an SMS? My guess is that a 1kB email is cheaper, but does anybody know how much cheaper? (or more expensive)

swah• 16 years ago

Over 9000. If both accounts are from Gmail its even cheaper...

dotcoma4• 16 years ago

a 1 kB email is 9,000 times cheaper? Can you please point to any sort of evidence for this please? Thx.

alnayyir• 16 years ago

He was making a sarcastic memetic reference.

Your question isn't very answerable.

Ask a more specific or meaningful question.

grk• 16 years ago

From what I've heard, once a mobile operator builds the infrastructure, the cost of sending SMS is zero. The traffic they generate is negligible compared to voice, so charging for texts is pure income. That is, assuming you've paid off your infrastructure :)

dotcoma4• 16 years ago

so, once the infrastructure is there, GMail is more expensive?

AutomatedTester• 16 years ago

In terms of paying for it as a user

SMS is more expensive to send. It normally costs around £0.03 per thousand to send emails when it costs around that to send that for 1 sms.

In terms as a provider

For GMail they tend to store an email at least 6x to make sure you never lose something. This means the cost of an email is actually 6kb plus all the cost to store, replicate and the electricity that goes with it. While with the SMS the provider is really cheap as it doesnt use that much bandwidth to send and receive it.

dotcoma4• 16 years ago

so, GMail more expensive?

ismarc• 16 years ago

The cost is all about scale. an email is going to cost whatever your metered rate is for the traffic (well, technically 2x the metered rate, once for incoming, once for outgoing traffic). For Google's infrastructure and typical bandwidth usage, the cost trends to zero. An SMS message is sent as a packet of data in the control channel to your phone. The cost of an individual SMS message is not as easy to determine as the cost of an email. Your phone exchanges packets of data on the control channel whether you're receiving (or sending) SMS message or not. The SMS message is an additional piece of data that is sent over a constrained channel. In most areas, the towers will be able to easily handle the peak usage of the area without any degradation of service, meaning the towers can easily handle the traffic. However, unlike email, the more SMS messages are sent, the more expensive each individual one is since the tower has to be able to handle that number of simultaneous control channels.

While the cost per SMS does go down as a mobile carrier expands their network, it uses a separate channel from the voice and data, but the same channel your phone uses to negotiate a connection with the tower and to migrate between towers. The premium paid for SMS messages on your phone bill is due to this.

I'm not saying that the cost charged for SMS messages reflects their actual delivery costs to the provider, just that there is a real, measurable cost associated with each SMS message. Essentially, the question you're asking is "What costs more, a gallon of milk or driving to work?"

dotcoma4• 16 years ago

interesting to know - I had no clue - that SMS messages use "the same channel your phone uses to negotiate a connection with the tower and to migrate between towers", and that it is a separate channel the one that handles voice and data.

I know, my question is very much apples vs oranges. My question is something like: if I could use email as a perfect substitute for SMS messages, would I (a web startup) be able to compete in a downward spiral on price against operators?

Ask HN: what costs more? a 1 kB email or an SMS?

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