Irish Spring

 

In 2009, an employee who worked for the Unlimited IT call center in Howick, South Africa became so frustrated, he told his boss, “The Internet here is so slow, a pigeon would deliver these files faster.” The company decided to put his theory to the test. They hired a pigeon fancier with an eleven-month-old bird named Winston to race against their Internet connection. Winston wore a pocket with a 4gb USB stick when he was released from the Unlimited IT office in Howick. He headed “home” to Durban, about 60 miles away. At the same time, an employee began transferring the same files via their Internet connection. Hundreds of South Africans followed the race on Facebook and Twitter. Winston arrived in Durban an hour and eight minutes later, and it took another hour to upload the files from the USB stick. In that same amount of time, only 4% of the online data transfer had been completed.