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May 14, 2011

Faster Than A Speeding ... Huh?


The telecommunications industry in the Union of South Africa is bested by centuries old technology and a few ounces of bird seed.
FRUSTRATED IT workers have shown that a pigeon can transfer data faster than a major internet service provider (ISP).

Workers at a South African information technology company this week proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country's leading ISP.

Africa's largest economy has poor internet speed and connectivity – and high costs - because of a bandwidth shortage.
The worker strapped an SD card to a carrier pigeon and and had it fly about 70 miles to another office.
The transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds – including downloading from the pigeon's card...During that time, only four per cent of the data was transferred using a Telkom line.
Mheh. Could it be the bandwidth is taken up by porn-related transmissions?



Note: Carrier pigeons are actually domesticated rock pigeons. Pigeons have been used to transfer information for over 2,000 years. The Romans used them. The Romans were also the very first to develop over night shipping with carrier eagles.

10 comments:

WoFat said...

Ark! Aflack!

Sr Crystal Mary Lindsey said...

And, It doesn't get lost in space...Wake up Australia also!! Good onya.

Doom said...

Yeah, I would like to see them try and electronically hack THAT transfer.

sig94 said...

WoFat - that goose could handle a hard drive.

sig94 said...

Mary - pigeons are like Capri pants; wait long enough and they always come back in fashion.

sig94 said...

Doom - the only thing you'd have to do is train them to evade shotguns.

Teresa said...

This is really cool! These domesticated rock pigeons must be carrier pigeons as well.

sig94 said...

Teresa - it is truly amazing how God has wired these little birds to unerringly fly home.

christian soldier said...

usually do not comment--
this one brought a LOL-

...carrier eagles-too! :-)
Carol-CS

sig94 said...

CS - Yup, I giggled a bit when putting this together. It's amazing what modern science has wrought in the last 100 years, but the ancients were not rock-throwing fools either.