[JvanEkris]

NASA has its own dedicated network costing billions, but also transporting propably gigabytes or even terrabytes per day, which it will do for some decades. This makes the costs per megabyte pretty low, just because of the sheer volume of data transported per day.

An SMS is small volume of data, where setup and billing costs, as well as maintenance cost of the hardware become significant per megabyte. Even when you take in account that a lot of people use the hardware simultanously, it will not compete with the price per megabyte when you use bulk transport of any kind.

I think it is a bit like comparing the cost of transporting a liter/gallon of fuel between a dedicated supertanker (i.e. a lot of volume making the costs per gallon pretty low) or using a courier (not much volume, making the cost per volume collosal)?

Jaap