Carrier pigeon faster than broadband internet
Fenris
http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/005462/index.html
22 September 2009
Carrier pigeon faster than broadband internet
In South Africa, a carrier pigeon carrying a 4GB memory stick proved to
be faster than the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm,
Telkom. Winston the pigeon took one hour and eight minutes to carry the
data across the 60-mile course, and it took another hour to upload the
data. During the same time, the ADSL had sent just 4% of the data. The
race was held by an IT company in Durban, South Africa, called Unlimited
IT. One of Unlimited IT?s employees complained about the slow speed of
data transmission on ADSL, saying that data would get transferred faster
by carrier pigeon. To highlight just how slow the broadband internet is,
the company decided to test that claim. The 11-month-old Winston flew 60
miles from Unlimited IT's call center in Howick to another office in
Durban. To make sure that the bird didn't have an unfair advantage,
Unlimited IT imposed some rules on its website, including "no cats
allowed" and "birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds
within." Hundreds of South Africans followed the race on social
networking sites Facebook and Twitter. For its part, Telkom said that it
was not responsible for Unlimited IT's slow broadband speeds. A Telkom
spokesperson said that they had made several recommendations to
Unlimited IT to improve its service, but none of the suggestions had
been accepted. As the BBC reports, South Africa is one of the countries
that could benefit from three new fiber optic cables being laid around
the African continent to improve internet service.
PhysOrg.com
September 22, 2009
Original web page at PhysOrg.com
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Fenris
RSPCA-Animadversion
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