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How FlexiSPY costs compare to NEOCOSTS SMS Forwarding
PURPOSE : A certain competetior of FlexiSPY
called NEOCOST uses a much more expensive way of delivering
the phone activity to you. This study will tell you
how much more expensive NEOCOST is to FlexiSPY
OVERVIEW : In the area of phone activity
monitoring, activity data may be transferred using
GPRS connections, or by sending information as an
SMS. SMS costs vary with country of origin and country
of destination. This study compares the FlexiSPY costs
with SMS forwarding for the UK as source country and
Thailand as destination
FlexiSPY Operation : FlexiSPY may be set
to deliver by timer or by number of events. In event
mode, the maximum number of events is 1000, after
which a network connection will automatically be made.
This is the most economical mode. Alternatively, FlexiSPY
may connect after every event, making this the most
expensive mode.
Expensive SMS forwarding : SMS forwarding uses the
SMS payload to deliver the Also due to the 160 character
restriction, the number of SMS required to transmit
an event may vary depending on the information to
be conveyed. SMS costs were taken to be 1 USD for
international and 35c for domestic reflecting average
UK costs. GPRS cost were assumed to be 5 USD per MB.
| |
Unit
Size (Bytes) |
Payload
Size (Bytes) |
| Headers
(If using HTTP ) |
1024 |
1024 |
| SMS
Content |
160 |
160000 |
| Contact
Name |
20 |
20000 |
| Time |
8 |
8000 |
| Phone
Number |
16 |
16000 |
| Unique
ID |
4 |
4000 |
| MetaData |
5 |
5000 |
 |
 |
 |
| GPRS
Payload size ( Bytes) |
|
214024 |
| Total
Cost using FLEXISPY (USD) |
|
$0.20 |
 |
 |
 |
| Total
Cost using NEO COSTS (International) |
|
$1000.00 |
| Total
Cost using NEO COSTS( DOMESTIC) |
|
$350.00 |
 |
 |
 |
| Cost
improvement using FLEXISPY ( International) |
|
5000 |
| Cost
Improvement using FLEXPSPY ( Domestic) |
|
1750 |
| 1MB
= 1,048,576 bytes |
Fig 1 Breakdown of delivering after 10000 Events
From Fig 1 above, we can see that the total data
size transmitted by FlexiSPY is 214024 bytes, which
costs around 20 cents. Assuming that somehow one SMS
is enough to transmit the information describing one
event, the equivalent costs, to the person paying
the bill for the monitored device is 1000 USD, if
the device is sending from UK to Thailand . If the
device was sending domestically it would cost about
350 dollars.
| |
Unit
Size (Bytes) |
| Headers
(If using HTTP ) |
1024 |
| SMS
Content |
160 |
| Contact
Name |
20 |
| Time |
8 |
| Phone
Number |
16 |
| Unique
ID |
4 |
| MetaData |
5 |
 |
 |
| GPRS
Payload size ( Bytes) |
1237 |
| Cost
Per M (USD) |
$5 |
| Total
Cost using FLEXISPY (USD) |
$0.0059 |
 |
 |
| Total
Cost using NEOCOSTS international SMS |
$1 |
| Total
Cost using NEOCOSTS SMS domestic SMS |
$0.35 |
 |
 |
| Cost
improvement using FLEXISPY ( International) |
169.5 |
| Cost
Improvement using FLEXISPY ( Domestic) |
59 |
| 1MB
= 1,048,576 bytes |
Fig 2 Breakdown of delivering after every event
In Fig 2, FlexiSPY is set to deliver after every
event. It can be seen that the data costs are just
over half a cent, while the same information, if able
to be sent using one SMS, will cost the international
or domestic rate.
Conclusion
SMS forwarding is limited by the amount of data
that can be carried in an SMS, and the costs vary
dramatically. SMS forwarding will quite easily breach
the limits of a PRE PAID account because these accounts
are low value, usually about 100BT or £5 stirling.
You rarely get SMS promotions at PRE PAID, and SMS
forwading will depelete the users after a few dozen
events.
PRE PAID accounts account for the majority of
most network operators customers. In the UK and Thailand,
over 70% of subscriptions are PRE PAID.
For POST PAID accounts, the monthly bill would
be grossly inflated by the SMS charges. It is therefore
very likely that SMS forwarding monitoring systems
would easily be detected by an otherwise unaware user
as their network service would be terminated due to
excessive costs
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