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Race Pits Pigeons Against Poor UK Rural Broadband

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the heard-this-before dept.

Mark.JUK writes "Rural internet access in the United Kingdom, like many other countries around the world, is slow. So slow in fact that Trefor Davies, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at business ISP Timico, has decided to pit a typical rural broadband connection against homing pigeons (with attached memory cards) to see which can get 200MB of HD video data across an 84 mile trip the fastest. Meanwhile a farmer will attempt to upload the same video file to YouTube before the pigeons can complete their journey. The comical stunt is designed to raise awareness of the often woeful broadband speed experienced by many people who live in remote and rural parts of their country. However Davies does admit that 'there isn't a benchmark for pigeon data speeds,' yet."

4 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory IP Over Avian Carriers RFC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt

    1. Re:Obligatory IP Over Avian Carriers RFC by hesiod · · Score: 4, Informative

      I Went looking for that, and found this instead.

      "Bandwidth achieved by the pigeons was 2.27 Mbps."

  2. This has already happened... by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Informative

    The farmer was at 24% upload after 54mins when the first pigeon landed...
    Now we can get back to our Monty Python / african swallow posts...

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  3. Re:African or European? by SMoynihan · · Score: 5, Informative

    European. The African pigeon beat broadband last year. Early pigeon protocol (PP) trials were also spearheaded in the States last year.