Monday, September 14, 2009
S. African Business Pits Winston the Pigeon Against the Web
Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet? In S. Africa, Yes
S. African Business Pits Winston the Pigeon Against the Web
Sometimes 12th-century technology wins.
This week, a South African call-center business, frustrated by persistently slow Internet speeds,... 
(Getty Images)This week, a South African call-center business, frustrated by persistently slowInternet speeds, decided to use a carrier pigeon named Winston to transfer 4 gigabytes of data between two of its offices, just 50 miles apart.
At the same time, a computer geek pushed a button on his computer to send data the old-fashioned way, through the Internet.
Winston the pigeon won. It wasn't even close.
"Winston arrived after two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds," says Kevin Rolfe, head of the information technology department at Unlimited Group, a call-center business based in Durban.
As for the Internet data transfer, he says, "when we finally stopped the computer, about 100 megs had transferred, which is about 4 percent of the total."
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