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You have probably seen simple web-based mobile phone tariff calculators, but beware !
The problem of calculating the cheapest mobile
phone tariff is extremely complex not only because there
are so many different tariffs, but also because the
tariffs change so rapidly and different suppliers use
very different ways of defining them, (for example the
hours corresponding to 'peak period'). In addition,
individual use profiles vary dramatically.
No web calculator or salesperson has a hope of handling
this kind of complexity and the best they can do is a
poor and often highly misleading guess.
Staff scientists at Oakwood Computing Associates Ltd., our
parent company, solved this problem using an advanced technique
known as fuzzy global optimisation theory, perfected inhouse
to use on problems in mathematical physics. The computations necessary to find the cheapest mobile
phone tariff for a typical use profile currently require around a
hundred million calculations. However, even with such sophistication,
such calculations on a modern server usually only take
around a second:
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A screenshot of Betterdeal's interactive software during a tariff computation.
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