The unlikely celebrity pigeon, Winston, outpaced an ADSL connection in a 4GB data transfer across 80km in KwaZulu-Natal today.
Local call centre business, The Unlimited, set out to display how unreliable local data connections are in the area. The company settled on Winston the homing pigeon to transfer the data on a memory stick strapped to his leg, while a simultaneous download of equal size was run across an ADSL line.
Including upload and download of the data to the card, Winston's data transfer took a total time of two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds, while the ADSL line transferred 100MB in the same time.
The Unlimited's IT head, Kevin Rolfe, says the company frequently has trouble transferring data between its call centre hub in Hillcrest and its various satellite centres within KwaZulu-Natal. The company fields 500 seats across its various call centre stations, which are connected via ADSL.
According to the company, it can't yet afford to upgrade to dedicated lines, which would allow it more security on the line quality. “We also only transfer about 5GB of data in total per week, which does not warrant a bigger connection.”
However, Telkom says it has consulted with The Unlimited on the current connectivity it is using. Executive of business sales and solutions at Telkom, Troy Hector, says: “Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer, but none of these have to date been accepted. It must also be noted that Telkom is not the customer's core service provider.”
Internet Solutions (IS), which is a confirmed service provider for The Unlimited, says: “This exercise only identifies the levels that local broadband users will go to in order to prove that we still have a while to go before we have real broadband in the country.”
IS broadband business unit manager, Royden Dall, notes that while Seacom offers Africa access to more bandwidth, if a bottleneck exists in the network, “pigeons will still be faster”.
“And don't forget that many a truth is said in jest, and it really is about time we had a local network that could support true high-speed data transfer,” he adds.
The Unlimited says it will most likely not use the pigeon method as its primary communication system. Instead, Rolfe states the company is looking into several other options, including installing its own radio frequency network to handle the branch capacity.
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