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AP:Man Gets $218 Trillion Phone Bill


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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060411/ap_on_fe_st/trillion_dollar_phone_bill;_ylt=ApoVe3HCkixcs8ISdjBQGaztiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

Man Gets $218 Trillion Phone Bill

Tue Apr 11, 1:38 AM ET

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he recieved a $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution, a newspaper reported Monday.

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

But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a $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 after his death.

"If the company wants to seek legal action as mentioned in the letter, I'm ready to face it," the paper quoted Yahaya as saying. "In fact, I can't wait to face it," he said.

Yahaya, from northern Kedah state, received a notice from the company's debt-collection agency in early April, the paper said. Yahaya said he nearly fainted when he saw the new bill.

Government-linked Telekom Malaysia Bhd. is the country's largest telecommunications company.

A company official, who declined to be identified as she was not authorized to speak to the media, said Telekom Malaysia was aware of Yahaya's case and would address it. She did not provide further details.

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Nice reporting. We thought Nunyo was bad:

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

Ok, let's think about this:

Phone charges collected between January and April: $218,000,000,000,000. ($218 Teradollars - just kidding)

That is about (generously) 12 weeks, 2,016 hours, 120,960 minutes, or 7,257,600 seconds.

If there were a phone call going for that entire time, the rate would have to be $1,802,248,677.25 per minute.

$1.8 billion per minute! That's $30 million per second.

To put it another way, if charged $100 per minute (the price to call Uranus), it would take 36 billion hours of non-stop talking to rack up that big of a bill. Thats 1.5 billion days, or 216 million weeks, or 4.1 million years.

OR, at $100 per minute, it would take 17.8 million people (73% of the entire population of Malaysia) talking on the same account for the 2,016 hours.

Telekom Malaysia's 2005 revenue was $13.9 billion dollars. Yeah, I looked it up, it's not hard, and I'm not even a reporter - Google is mighty. SO - at that rate it would take them 15,683 years to take in $218 trillion - but that's not counting for inflation.

Hmmm.... maybe it's an error. :geek:

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Hey you never know, there might be some VERY expensive 900 numbers in Malaysia.

Good point...also, it says 218 trillion dollars, but it doesn't specify American Dollars. Back in the day, if you went to a restaraunt in Mexico, your bill was probably around 50-60 million pesos. Could be a crazy exchange rate like that. :whoknows:

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Telekom Malaysia's 2005 revenue was $13.9 billion dollars. Yeah, I looked it up, it's not hard, and I'm not even a reporter - Google is mighty. SO - at that rate it would take them 15,683 years to take in $218 trillion - but that's not counting for inflation.

Hmmm.... maybe it's an error. :geek:

Unless this guys got teenage daughters.

In which case, all bets are off.

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