Pigeon And South Africa's Telkom Go Head-To-Head: Pigeon Wins By KO

We're not all serious around these parts, and sometimes when we find stories like this, we just have to share. Mostly because it's fantastic, in a sort of ridiculous kind of way. So what's the rub? It looks like over in South Africa, a local IT company in Durban wanted to test their broadband speeds, after conceding that their speeds are next to lousy. They wanted to stress their innovative nature, so they devised a fool-proof plan to test those speeds. What better way to do it, then race it against a pigeon? A shot of the old, in a race of the new.

So we've got the pigeon Winston, which got a 4GB USB memory stick strapped to its leg before it was tossed into the air, and sent on its way. The pigeon's path was from Durban to Howick, which is 60 miles, and it only took the pigeon one hour and eight minutes to make the trip. How long did it take South Africa's largest ISP, Telkom? It had only managed 4% of the same amount of data, in two hours.

So, in two hours it got 4% of 4GB of information, while it took a pigeon an hour. Telkom is obviously saying that their broadband is not slower than a pigeon, stating that there have been improvements suggested to all of their customers, but that have effectively, to this point in time, not been accepted or utilized. We'd say that considering it's been done, showing the opposite, that perhaps their broadband is indeed slower than a pigeon. But this is a one-time event, and maybe everyone in South Africa was trying to download something at the same time. Who knows.

[via T3]