South Africa pigeon faster than internet

South Africa has fallen far.

New Com AU

FRUSTRATED IT workers have shown that a pigeon can transfer data faster than a major internet service provider (ISP).

Workers at a South African information technology company this week proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country's leading ISP.

Africa's largest economy has poor internet speed and connectivity – and high costs - because of a bandwidth shortage.

Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km from Unlimited IT's offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to its leg.

The transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds – including downloading from the pigeon's card.

During that time, only four per cent of the data was transferred using a Telkom line.