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Look what the stork brought! Charity racks up $2700 phone bill for a bird tracker

By Daniel Petrov

Published: Jul 10, 2018, 6:33 AM

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Look what the stork brought! Charity racks up $2700 phone bill for a bird tracker

Аn earth-friendly Polish charity, EcoLogic Group, learned firsthand the power of roaming charges, taught to them by... the great white stork. Instead of delivering a baby, the legendary bird delivered a $2700 phone bill, after taking the 3700 miles journey from Poland to Sudan.

The environmentalists decided to equip the stork with an impromptu tracking device to study its annual migration patterns and used a local carrier SIM card for geolocation purposes only. Somewhere over the Blue Nile Valley, however, the stork and its tracker got separated, and someone found the SIM card inside the tracking device, took it out, and placed it in their own phone (cue the "look what the stork brought" narration here).

Unfortunately for EcoLogic, the culprit turned out to be of the chatty type and spent nearly 20 hours on the phone before the charity received the huge phone bill with exotic international roaming charges. Stork tracking turned out to be a pretty expensive endeavor for the environmentalists, as they have little choice now but to foot the bill, as explaining to collection agencies about conservation efforts usually leads to tepid results.

source: IFLScience, Photo by Alex Wigan on Unsplash

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena from 2010 to 2025, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.