Telkom is being pitted against a homing pigeon named Winston to see which can deliver 4GB of call centre data logs quickest over a distance of around 80km. The race is set to take place on September 9th.

Basically we will be flying a pigeon with a 4GB micro SD card from Howick to our central site in Hillcrest. We did a dry run yesterday.
Here is the stats: Pigeon took 48 minutes to deliver the data. ADSL is still downloading. Telkom got hold of this via the media and is currently in a flat spin. We got a call from Telkom asking us for our circuit numbers so they can make sure we have good service.
Here is the best part. We spend +/- R 45000 a month just on rental for these lines. If we moved to the Avian Carrier Network we will be saving a whopping R 35 000 a month. http://www.henriska.com/blog/?p=615

This will bring even more attention to South Africa’s beleaguered internet community, not that it needs anymore attention as we all know we paying too much for bandwidth. But i’m not sure this stunt will help, seacom has been online for just on two months and all I’ve heard are rustlings of speed increases. So we have really fast internet, still average by international standards, at an even more inflated price. Same same, move on, there is nothing to see here, at best all that’s going to happen is the company conducting the race will get better service from Telkom. As the song goes, meet the new boss same as the old boss and here is that song by the who, we won’t get fooled again, better know as the CSI theme. *pigeon sound*

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