Pigeon beats Telkom ADSL in data race

Yesterday Winston a homing pigeon made history in a race against Telkom ADSL line in delivering 4GB of data from Howick to Hillcrest, in KwaZule-Natal, South Africa.

He had to carry the data over 70km and managed to deliver the 4GB in 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds. When he arrived at the destination, the Telkom line had downloaded just under four percent of the data. This is after he gave them a 26 minute head start as he waited for the company data to be downloaded onto the memory card. It was stated that it could take up to two days to download all of the data over a Telkom ADSL line.

The Rules of Pigeonrace2009

1. No Cats allowed
2. The same amount of data will be sent on the landline and via the pigeon, on a SD card ( 4 gigabytes)
3. The race is from Howick to Hillcrest
4. The Pigeon flys from Howick to Gillits, and then will be transported via car to the finish site ( where the landline data will arrive)
5. The day will be announced closer to the time
6. Birdseed must not have any performance enhancing seeds within.
7. Data is not to be compressed.

For years now South Africa has been in a cyber stone age, with slow, high cost internet. The Unlimited Group initiated the pidgeon race to enphasize the problem. They surely made a big statement.

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