Pigeon > than South Africa’s Fastest ISP

What's Faster than an African ISP?

Reuters reports out of JOHANNESBURG –

A South African IT company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country’s leading ISP.
Many of us love the speeds – heck we even complain that they are to slow for our wants and needs here in the US – however due to a bandwidth shortage – connectivity in Africa’s largest economy is sub-… well – sub pigeon – and expensive.

A local news agency SAPA decided to test the speed of a pigeon vs the Internet  and sent their bird “Winston” on an 80 km (50 mile) flight – in all it took the bird just 1 hour and 8 minutes to complete the flight with the data strapped to its leg – whereas the download transfer took 2 hrs 6 min and 57 seconds.
More details here:  http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5885PM20090909