One can not help wondering, if history is repeating itself in South Africa. The Unlimited, a South African IT company, conducted a race to administer which was faster–sending a carrier pigeon with a 4 GB memory stick 50 miles or sending the data on South African carrier Telekom.
It all started when an employee of Unlimited IT Company complained about the speed of data of the ASDL Internet and commented sarcastically that it would be faster with a carrier pigeon. Giving way to a new idea of organizing a race between the pigeon and the Internet.
“We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement,” Unlimited’s Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.
The company then selected Flies Winston, an 11 month old pigeon to perform the stunt and armed the bird with a 4GB memory stick and set off for the 80 kilometer journey from Unlimited IT’s call centre in Howick to deliver the message to the company’s office in Durban. And in the mean time, data download procedure was initiated via Telkom, the country’s leading Internet Service provider.
Winston, the pigeon, took two hours & seven minutes to carry the data and including the download process – in the mean time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. Just like any other race, strict rules an regulations were followed, for instance, no performance enhancing seeds were allowed to Winston.
There is bandwidth shortage in South Africa, which is expected to improve after a new 17,000 kilometer underwater fiber optic cable is installed which will link South Africa and East Africa to other networks.
