We might complain about how it would be nice to have faster broadband but at least we don’t have to use a carrier pigeon to transfer data like Unlimited Group in South Africa.
The IT firm in South Africa quite regularly transfers four gigabyte of encrypted data between two offices that are 50 miles apart. Even with their current broadband speeds it take some six hours to transfer the data whereas it will take about 45 minutes for a pigeon with a special memory card attached to the bird’s leg.
Unlimited Group boss Kevin Rolfe said: ‘It might sound crazy in this day and age, but we’re always looking for new ways to move our business forward and we think this might just work.
‘For years we’ve struggled with the internet as a method of communication. It’s fine for emails and correspondence, but we need to transfer a lot of data from office to another and find it often lets us down.
‘To send four gigabytes of encrypted information takes around six hours on a good day. If we get bad weather and the service goes down then it can up to two days to get through.
‘We started looking at other ways to solve the problem and discovered that carrier pigeons could do the job a lot more quickly.’
Source: Mail Online – Firm enlists Winston the homing pigeon to transfer data – because he’s faster than broadband
And we laugh at the memories of sneaker-nets
