Let us give you an example of data compression application that you see every day. Exchanging faxes every day is one of those inevitable tasks of every business. As we have recently learned, FaxOnDemand features are more efficient then regular mail. But fax devices would not work without data compression algorithms. The image of your document is not being sent over the phone line as is.
Fax compresses the data before it sends it to reduce the time needed to transmit the document.
This reduces the cost of transmission 10 or more times. Now imagine there is no data compression. But this is the simplest example of data compression. There are many other applications where you could use data compression to save money. You should look around and see that you are not spending extra for no reason.