Pigeon beats broadband in data transfer race
submitted by markodonoghue on 10 September 2009
A financial services company based in Durban, South Africa, has become so frustrated with its slow broadband connection that's it begun transferring large files via homing pigeon.
This pigeon named Winston carried a USB stick against its broadband connection to find out which would be faster transferring the data between its two offices 80km apart.
Winston arrived with the USB stick in two hours and seven minutes, just as the download hit 4% complete. The company believes Winston can be trained to deliver the data in 45 minutes, a significant boost over its extremely slow broadband connection.
The company's chief executive Kevin Rolfe said "For years we've struggled with the internet as a method of communication. It's fine for e-mails and correspondence, but we need to transfer a lot of data from one office to another and find it often lets us down. If we get bad weather and the service goes down it can take up to two days to get through."
He did admit the plan is not without its difficulties: "There are other problems, of course. Winston is vulnerable to the weather and predators such as hawks. Obviously he will have to take his chances but we're confident this system can work for us,' says Rolfe.
We're at an age of networking excellence but for some parts of the world they are still stuck back in time, limited by technology provided. Using age old ways of contacting one another, to fight the crippling effects of slow broadband is very impressive.
There's just one problem. What if someone is doing a spot of pigeon shooting!?
Submitted by:
Mark O'Donoghue
Associated Links:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351478/pigeon-beats-broadband-in-data-transfer-race
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