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Do you ever feel that pages load too slowly in your browser or those files take forever to get downloaded?
An IT company in South Africa got fed up on the slow rates of transfer using a ADSL-connection and in frustration a member of the staff allegedly said that the data would get faster delivery even if using a pigeon. Said and done, the event was created as an idea that was about to be put into reality.
“We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement,” Unlimited’s Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.
A pigeon named Winston was carrying a 4GB memory stick while completing a one hour flight, and unloading the data from the stick into the recieving system was another hour. All in all the transaction to the receiving system was two hours. At the same time as Winston got air beneath his wings a transfer was initiated over the companys ADSL for the same amount of data. When the two hours have passed and Winstons data was secure in place out of the memory-stick, the ADSL had transfered amazingly 4% of the data.
The entire event was broadcasted and hundred of people is said to have followed the race between nature and technology and I myself must admit that I would have followed it as well if I just had found out about it earlier.
So what did the telecom-company have to say about the great spectacle showing off their bad networks? Of course they are not to blame about the country’s infrastructure and also they claim to have asked the company with the pigeon to perform changes. But one might think that they would take the opportunity to actually show off some goals of how the situation is to get better instead of starting a blame-game. For me as a remote reader in another part of the world it just seem like they tried to get away.
The story is never the less great news in many places and it again shows that our networks is not build for big transfers. It was created to fetch information and exchange information, not delivering truck-loads of pure data. So for the next time you’re about to send those dvds containing pictures from your last trip to friends and family, check what it cost to send them in a box – not a package.
The full story at BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm
