You might as well be on Mars
The United States has again returned to the Red Planet. The Rover's radio gear communicates directly with earth or to orbiting satellites above Mars. At a data rate equal to most terrestrial cellular networks!
This wonderful graphic from the Chronicle tells the story in a more pictorial form. Click here to view. (147K). Quite nice.
Sending data over cellular networks has always been slow. Cellular radio was built on low bandwidth rates to conserve spectrum and because voice was the first priority. Only now are technologies like EDGE and GPRS slowly improving data transfer speeds.
But a typical file transfer on a present cellular radio system, today, while driving about in a car or truck, gets no better results than NASA does from Rover, millions of miles in space: from 3,500 bits per second to 12,000 bits per second. Remember that old 14.4 modem you used to have? NASA would love that top speed and you might too, getting that new picture phone of yours to work.
At the bottom of this page I write about how telephony is no longer possible when distances stretch far into space:
http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory/soundwaves.html
And there's a mention of Britney Spears so you really should check it out. :-)