This is just an interesting little piece of news I spotted today:

Pigeon transfers data faster than South Africa’s Telkom

Whoa, nothing like a little reality to get me to stop whining about my intermittent wireless here in the house!

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country’s leading internet service provider.

Internet speed and connectivity in Africa’s largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive.

Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg.

Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds — the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line.

SAPA said Unlimited IT performed the stunt after becoming frustrated with slow internet transmission times.

Holy cow!! LOL! What a way to bring attention to the situation! Telcom is hoping that a new underwater fiber optic cable, set for construction sometime soon, will improve speed. Yeah, I hope so! South Africa is hosting the soccer World Cup championship next year…

Tags: broadband, South Africa, technology