IN THIS day and age, Internet speed and connectivity are of the utmost importance if one wants to stay in the rat race or stay up-to-date with the latest happenings locally and internationally.
But imagine this – when the internet in the office is too slow to load data from one office to another, that someone decides to use the old-fashioned method – sending the data via homing pigeon.
But did a company use a pigeon to prove that its office’s connection was slow?
Verdict:
TRUE
This sounds stranger than fiction, but in 2009, an IT services company in South Africa decided to do so. The company, Unlimited IT, was frustrated with the super-slow Internet speed provided by the country’s internet service provider Telkom.
The company has 11 call-centres around the country and regularly sends data to its other branches.
Unlimited IT wanted to find out whether it was faster to send data from one branch office to another using the country’s Internet service, or with using a homing pigeon.
According to South Africa’s news agency SAPA, the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took about one hour and eight minutes to fly the some 80km from the office near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card strapped to his leg.
To make sure that the bird did not 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 (now known as X).
Including downloading the data, the transfer made by Winston took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds. In that same amount of time, only 4% of the data was transferred using a Telkom line.
So yes, the pigeon managed to transfer data faster than an Internet-service provider over 15 years ago.
The BBC also reported South Africa is one of the countries that could benefit from three new fibre optic cables being laid around the African continent to improve internet service.
Interestingly enough, a similar face was carried out in the UK the following year – this time, pitting pigeons against data speed in the country’s rural area.
BBC reported that 10 pigeons with USB drives were released from a Yorkshire farm at the same time a five-minute video upload was begun. An hour and a quarter later, the pigeons had reached their destination in Skegness some 120km away, while only 24% of a 300MB file had uploaded.
Campaigners were reported saying that the stunt was being carried out to illustrate that broadband in some parts of the UK is still “not fit for purpose”.
Of course, as compared to the past, many countries now have 5G internet data speeds, with speed theoretically going up to 10 Gigabits per second for either fast data transfers, movie streaming or even online gaming.
In Malaysia, the government’s dual 5G network model targets 80% coverage by 2026, ensuring Malaysians and businesses enjoy fast and affordable Internet access.
Budget 2026 has proposed that some RM770mil be allocated for better network connections.
Perhaps the next time you encounter slow Internet in the office, you could say that ‘a pigeon can send the email to the client faster’.
References:
https://www.npr.org/2009/09/
https://www.reuters.com/
https://www.bbc.com/news/
https://phys.org/news/2009-09-
https://www.thestar.com.my/
https://www.thestar.com.my/