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Eagles Run Up Huge Roaming Charges For Scientists Studying Them Via SMS

posted by janrinok on Monday October 28 2019, @06:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The scientists from R.R.R. Conservation Network attached SMS transmitters to 13 eagles to study their migration flight patterns. They aimed to better understand possible threats to the endangered Russian eagle population (the steppe eagle was listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2015).

As the birds migrated four times a day, the scientists received SMS messages with coordinates of the birds' location. They used satellite photos to see where the birds ended up, according to BBC News.

Whenever an SMS message was sent, the Russian phone company MegaFon billed the scientists.

What the scientists didn't count on was one of the tagged birds flying out of range from Kazakhstan to Iran, which ran up huge data roaming charges for the team.

An onslaught of text messages from the bird ended up costing 49 rubles each (approximately 77 cents) -- which was more than five times the expected price, and ended up exceeding the research project's budget, according to The New York Times on Saturday.

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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 29 2019, @12:01AM (1 child)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @12:01AM (#913034)

    While I'm not sure about the availability in Russia it's not uncommon elsewhere to have subs that include free (or allow for a teenage-girl-level) of messages per month. So why pay per message?

    The price per SMS in Kazakhstan was about 15 roubles (18p; 30 US cents), but each SMS from Iran cost 49 roubles. Min used up the entire tracking budget meant for all the eagles.

    From the BBC article. So a message when the eagle was in Kazakhstan was 15 rubles and went it flew into Iran it was 49 rubles. How did this break the research bank? OK so it's about three times the cost per message but still not exactly a fortune.

    An onslaught of text messages from the bird ended up costing 49 rubles each (approximately 77 cents) -- which was more than five times the expected price,

    Is that some kind of special New York times maths I don't know about there 49 is more then five times 15?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @06:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @06:49AM (#913163)

    While I'm not sure about the availability in Russia it's not uncommon elsewhere to have subs that include free (or allow for a teenage-girl-level) of messages per month. So why pay per message?

    I'm going to guess it's hard to get the eagles to sign up for a different package when they visit Iran or other countries.

    While some stores would help the birds swap the SIMs, in some cases IDs are required so it might be illegal for the eagles... ;)