Journalistic innumeracy, part 873

I love this story about a $218 trillion phone bill.

Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father's phone line in January after he died and settled the 84-ringgit (U.S. $23) bill, the New Straits Times reported.

But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a 806,400,000,000,000.01-ringgit (U.S. $218 trillion) bill for recent telephone calls along with orders to settle within 10 days or face legal proceedings, the newspaper reported.

It wasn't clear whether the bill was a mistake, or if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after his death.

It wasn't clear whether the bill was a mistake???

Let's say that Yahaya's father's phone line was used continuously and illegally after his death, for 90 full days before the phone bill arrived. In order to rack up a $218 trillion bill, the charges would have to be $1.7 billion per minute.

Look at it this way: Malaysia has a population of about 24 million people. If every Malaysian was on the phone at the same time, the average charge would have to be $70 per minute in order to get up to a total of $1.7 billion per minute.

I think we can assume that yes, the bill was a mistake.

Posted by Felix at 14:31 EST

Comments

I take the (admittedly murky) prose to mean that the bill was either a (computer) mistake, i.e. randomly generated, or a bill actually generated by illegal usage.

Either way, v. awesome.

Posted by: Lock at 15:23 EST, April 11, 2006

Right. And there's no way in hell that any amount of illegal usage could ever generate a bill of that magnitude.

Posted by: Felix at 16:24 EST, April 11, 2006

OMG you actually had to spell out the point of your post. lol.

Posted by: Stefan at 17:07 EST, April 11, 2006