In a satirical attempt to highlight slow and often inconsistent transfer speeds in South Africa, a financial services company has decided to host Pigeon Race 2009. The company postulates that in a data race, a pigeon could haul a 4GB file to a location faster than it can be transferred through a normal land line. The affable 11-month old homing pigeon, named Winston, will have a 4 GB flash stick SD card strapped to its leg and will fly from the company’s call centre in Howick to its head office in Hillcrest, Durban, a distance of 80 km.
Risking bad weather and death by predatory hawks, the pigeon is expected to arrive in 45 minutes whilst the landline transfer is expected to take two days. The race is expected to start tomorrow. Keep updated with the story on Pigeon Race 2009.
Already people have placed more favour with the pigeon over the telco giant – a commenter on The Times article feels that the pigeon will be faster even if it walks. And some MyBroadband forum members think someone will shoot the bird so they can braai it. Others think Telkom might be hard at working trying to secure an unimpeded connection to secure the win.
What are your thoughts?
[via MyBroadband]
Update (09/09/09): Winston did not disappoint his 1000+ Facebook fans, landing safely in 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds. At that point the ADSL transfer still around four percent complete. A round of applause for Winston and birdband :yes:
News travels fast – Winston makes it onto the Daily Mail and gets Slashdotted.