The old joke has come true. A carrier pigeon has thrashed the ISP of South Africa’s incumbent telco for speed (full report):
11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km 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.
Sounds spectacular, but note that file transfer took almost an hour (presumably this was 2 transfers: onto and off the data card), so this was a LOT of data. Still, its a great story. (HT: NZ Herald)