Pigeon surfing is faster than broadband internet?! ;-)
By ShepherdSpy
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
Omagh, Northern Ireland
September 10, 2009 5:49pm CST
http://news.uk.msn.com/odd-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=149628867
A Carrier pigeon in South Africa carried a 4Gb Memory stick of data to its destination 2 hours away..and the equivalent amount of data being transferred by a local broadband provider was by that time only at 4% of the way through it's transfer to a computer at the same destination!
2 people like this
6 responses
@cbakin20 (149)
• United States
11 Sep 09
That's really funny. Some parts of the world have really bad internet speeds! I've seen ones that only get a few kbps. The average speed in the US, I think is a few mbps. In some countries, the speeds are often hundreds of mbps to even higher! I wish my internet went that fast...
2 people like this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
11 Sep 09
I know what You Mean...I started online from this place with dialup (56kb),and have held on as my local exchange upgraded to broadband speeds..it may be capable of 3 or 4 Mb transfer speeds by now,but having moved up from a 512kb broadband to 1Mb broadband in the past year,I'm doing ok,but faster would be better!
1 person likes this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
11 Sep 09
My apologies to "Winston",the pigeon...He actually made the 50 mile flight in 1 hour and 8 minutes-the REST of the 2 hours+ mentioned in the article even included the time it took to download the data they sent onto the drive!
1 person likes this
@phamilton (57)
• United States
10 Sep 09
I have the 3G broadband in the US with Verizon Wireless and it is just as fast as my old cable ISP was.
2 people like this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
10 Sep 09
What speed of transfer rate does that work out to be? and how does it compare with the feathered version?
@phamilton (57)
• United States
11 Sep 09
Status on my adapter shows 230.4 Kbps but I don't know if that's the uplink or downlink. Don't know how it would compare to the feathered version. :)
1 person likes this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
11 Sep 09
Check out one of the free online data transfer apps-they're useful for comparisons between services! (I doubt if they're set up for pigeon transfer rate,though!)
)
@dorypanda (1601)
•
11 Sep 09
That doesn't surprise me, I'm off to buy me a pigeon. :)
1 person likes this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
11 Sep 09
Ah,but how much backup do you need,whose turn is it to feed it,and whose turn is it to depoop the computer screen?!
@ferdzNK (3211)
• Philippines
11 Sep 09
Very interesting article! Never really though about that. If I do torrent then my bicycle is much faster than broadband if its over land. We'll soon get there, that's with internet speed, somehow because the trend these days are faster and cheaper. I been using dial up for a longtime that my leap to DSL over broadband was just a year.
P.S. there's an extra character in your link that may prevent your reader for going to it, but just remove the "<br>A" and its fine.
1 person likes this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
11 Sep 09
sorry about that..some of my links eat the first letter of the accompanying discussion! here's another report on the same story..
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-09-09-pigeon-faster_N.htm?csp=Tech
1 person likes this
@scififan43 (2434)
• United States
12 Sep 09
I have head abut this on the news here. I find it hard to belive that a country as moderen as South Afica is that they would be experenceing problmes like that.
1 person likes this
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
13 Sep 09
It Sounds as though there's at least one company,if not one technology sector,that has a bit of catchup to be getting on with...
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
16 Sep 09
The FX for the movie were by Peter Jackson's WETA workshop,so maybe were completed in New Zealand..
@scififan43 (2434)
• United States
13 Sep 09
that sounds about right. but like I said, I can't belive that a country as modern as S. Africa would even have that problem. I can see a developing counrty haveing that problem, but not a county like S. Afica. esp sice they have made that new si-fi movie District 9.
@kryptoscode (452)
• Philippines
11 Sep 09
This is very funny but seriously the one who planned this is very clever. Imagine with today's technology he still manage to come up with this idea. And how sad we don't have faster speed to much commercialism.
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
11 Sep 09
I'm just Imagining somebody frustrated enough to be having the thought "A carrier pigeon would be faster than this freakin' download!" and then going ahead and setting up the experiment...I bet there's been some red faces at that ISP's marketing meetings since this story hit the wires! It'll take a long time for them to live this down...Maybe they could hire Muttley and D. Dastardly's Vulture Squadron..."Stop the Pigeon!"
