Title: What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?
Tags: english, personvern, surveillance
-Date: 2015-05-01 18:40
+Date: 2015-05-01 19:30
<p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
-cost of around 20 million NOK for all the calls in a year. I got
-curious and wondered what the same calculation would look like today.
-To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is needed for each
-minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in Norway sums up to,
-and the cost of data storage.</p>
+cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
+year. I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
+like today. To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
+needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
+Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
<p>The 2005 numbers are from
-<ahref="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
+<a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
the 2012 numbers are from
-<ahref="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
+<a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
-email.</p>
+email. I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
+and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
+different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
<p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
-enough. Se for example a
-<ahref="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
-from Cisco</a> for some alternatives. 8 Kbit/s is 60 Kbytes/min, and
-this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes to get the
-storage requirements.</p>
+enough. See for example a
+<a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
+on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives. 8 Kbit/s is 60
+Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
+to get the storage requirements.</p>
<p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
availability requirements etc. But a simple way to calculate can be
-to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK) and double it to take
-space, power and redundancy. It could be much higher with high speed
-and good redundancy requirements.</p>
+to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
+it to take space, power and redundancy into account. It could be much
+higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
<p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
calls in Norway? Not much. Here is a small table showing the
estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
and large organisations:</p>
-<table>
-<tr><th>Year</th><th>Minutes of calls</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK</th></tr>
-<tr><td>2005</td><td>24 000 000 000</td><td>1.3 PiB</td><td>3 mill</td></tr>
-<tr><td>2012</td><td>18 000 000 000</td><td>1.0 PiB</td><td>2.2 mill</td></tr>
-<tr><td>2013</td><td>17 000 000 000</td><td>950 TiB</td><td>2.1 mill</td></tr>
+<table border="1">
+<tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
+<tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
</table>
<p>This is the cost of buying the storage. Maintenance need to be
-taken into account too, but I leave that as an exercise for the
-reader. :)</p>
+taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
+for the reader. But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
+recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
+stopped because it is too expensive. I wonder if someone already is
+collecting the data?</p>
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