Roaming tariff, for the cost of a new home

Thursday, July 21st, 2011 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

Roaming is expensive. The information may not be new, but the graphic is fun.

In Barry Collins’ article on PC Pro, 40GB of data that costs the same as a house, the roaming costs on various carriers and plans are depicted graphically.

40GB of data is quite a bit of data. One commenter on a blog estimated it at “95 DVD videos compressed… or about 40,000 songs, or couple hundred thousand pictures…look at a standard PC hard drive.”

However, I liked some of the comments I saw posted:

• “Yes, it’s expensive to travel.”
• “If you were to transmit that same 40GB by text it would cost you $52,400,000.”
• many discussions on the true cost of a house in other parts of the world, along with rental prices..
• “I never understood why it costs so much to send a few bytes over a line, it’s not like the bytes need to be transported manually…”
• So if you went into a bar in France and got charged £2,000 for a pint of Bitter you would consider it OK?

How many of you remember to turn on Wi-Fi on your phone when roaming? I know that I don’t. Plus, I don’t like the battery drain. But, I would rather spend those roaming charges on …roaming. Getting to my destination. Just don’t expect me to post pictures when I get there.