Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: Alan on 07/07/2010 17:30:02
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Alan asked the Naked Scientists:
How much data is used during a mobile phone voice call, say, compared to an Internet connection with Facebook etc on a smartphone?
You would think voice data would be larger than the facebook data, but I think we are charged more for the latter. Hope this makes sense
Alan Freeman from Durham City UK
What do you think?
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The phone is 64Kbps (one way) ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DS0
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Voice is the equivalent of a 9600 BPS channel both ways, although the codecs used are simple, and do data reduction and bandwith limiting so as to allow the speech to be sent in the allocated slot in the channel. This allows many phones to share the same channel, using time division. Data uses basically more channels, or more slots, or greater bandwidth by combining channels. This means you either need more cells or more channels to provide coverage without overloading the network, and data tends to be more continuous, whereas most phones in any particular cell are not likely to be making a call at any one time.
THe most expensive for the user and the most profitable for the operator is text messaging, where you pay a massive price for what is basically a single packet of data to or from the handset.