Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet? In S. Africa, Yes

Sometimes 12th-century technology wins.

This week, a South African call-center business, frustrated by persistently slow Internet speeds,...

This week, a South African call-center business, frustrated by persistently slow Internet speeds, decided to use a carrier pigeon named Winston to transfer 4 gigabytes of data between two of its offices, just 50 miles apart. At the same time, a computer geek pushed a button on his computer to send data the old-fashioned way, through the Internet.

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This week, a South African call-center business, frustrated by persistently slow Internet speeds, decided to use a carrier pigeon named Winston to transfer 4 gigabytes of data between two of its offices, just 50 miles apart.

At the same time, a computer geek pushed a button on his computer to send data the old-fashioned way, through the Internet.

Winston the pigeon won. It wasn't even close.

"Winston arrived after two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds," says Kevin Rolfe, head of the information technology department at Unlimited Group, a call-center business based in Durban.

As for the Internet data transfer, he says, "when we finally stopped the computer, about 100 megs had transferred, which is about 4 percent of the total."

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Winston the Pigeon Beats the Web

Officially, the Unlimited Group has not given up on the Internet, nor has it any plans to embrace the use of homing pigeons that was pioneered on the battlefield by Genghis Khan.

But while the pigeon-versus-Internet stunt was a resounding success in terms of satire, it also makes a point that many businesses throughout Africa are making: Africans pay some of the highest prices for some of the least reliable Internet service in the world.

And if a country like South Africa – relatively prosperous and developed – can't solve this problem, then it's going to need a lot more pigeons.

In most parts of Africa, Internet service is provided by satellite transmission dishes, an expensive and unreliable option. Go to an Internet cafe in Kinshasa or Khartoum, and you'll see dozens of earnest students and businessmen, typing out messages, pushing the send button, and then hoping the power doesn't go out before the message gets sent.

Your humble correspondent in Africa last year attempted to send about one minute of digital video of displaced people in Kenya to his headquarters in Boston, through the so-called broadband Internet service provided at his Nairobi hotel.

Six hours later, there was still an hourglass icon on his screen, with a message that simply read "sending."