Remember how last month an enterprising South African used a carrier pigeon to transfer data, and it was faster than using his DSL connection? Oh, how we laughed and laughed. Well, turns out that our own broadband situation is similarly awful, with ABC program Hungry Beast putting Telstra’s broadband to test against a pigeon and a car. Guess which one was the slowest?
The show transferred a 700MB file using all three methods from Tarana in rural NSW to Prospect in western Sydney, a distance of 130 odd kilometres. It took the pigeon about an hour, the car about two and ADSL… well, let’s just say that Telstra didn’t quite finish the race, although when the process started it was apparently going to take somewhere between four and nine hours.
So while we wait for the NBN, maybe we should invest a bit in pigeon training?