Migrating Eagles Cause Huge Data Roaming Charges

Oct 29, 2019 by apost team

When scientists are running very important experiments, it's very important for them to stay within budget. That's especially true if they are working under a grant provided by another company or a government agency. There's a lot of reasons why a particular experiment might cause scientists to go over budget but none could ever be as strange as what a group of Russian scientists just experienced.

A group of Russian scientists were recently tracking the migration habits of 13 steppe eagles. To track their movements, each eagles had a transmitter attached to its leg. The transmitter's job was to relay signals of the eagle's whereabouts via SMS messaging.

Working from the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Centre in Novosibirsk, the eagles were released from locations in southern Russia and Kazakhstan. The budget was designed to allow for messaging costs to come in at about 15 rubles (18p; 30 US cents) per message. No one could have predicted what was going to happen.

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It turns out that one eagle named Min decided to take an unusually long trip when it migrated all the way from Kazakhstan to Iran of all places. While on route, the transmitter temporarily ceased sending SMS messages as Min went out of range of the cellular system.

When Min finally arrived in Iran and back in range, all of the accumulated messages were finally transmitted. Unfortunately, it was done at Iran's messaging rate of 49 rubles, triple the originally estimated cost, which effectively used up the entire transmission budget.

In response to the unanticipated budget overrun, the Russian researchers took to crowdfunding to raise the money to pay off the bill. It's great to report they were able to raise more than 100,000 rubles (£1,223) under the project crowdfunding name "Top up the eagle's mobile".

In the meantime, Russian mobile phone operator Megafon decided to cancel the total debt and offered to put the project administers under a cheaper transmission rate for the remainder of the project. That was great news.

That means the scientists should have enough left in the budget to complete their research with an eye on helping the survival of the species.

The next time you get upset by a family member running up the phone bill, it should be easy to understand how cell costs can suddenly go through the roof - at least if you're researching eagles.

This is a lesson you might want to take to other family members and friends. If you have any comments or similar experiences, we would love to hear what you have to say.