Winston the pigeon wings it

Winston The Pigeon. Winston the pigeon is not only the most tech-savvy pigeon in the world, but he also carries himself - and data bundles - remarkably well. And much faster than Telkom. The 11-month-old homing pigeon took off from a call centre in Howick on Wednesday morning to deliver four gigabytes of data to The Unlimited company's office in Hillcrest, Durban, easily winning the race against an ADSL line. 'It gets people smiling and it gets people talking' "Winston is over the moon," The Unlimited IT head Kevin Rolfe said. "He is happy to be back at the office and is now just chilling with his friends."

The flight took an hour and eight minutes.

"It was a little slower than what we were hoping for but it was overcast and rainy, with a lot of mist, that made travel conditions difficult for the little fellow," said Rolfe.

In total, it took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds for Winston to leave Howick with the data card strapped to his legs, to fly to Hillcrest, and to upload the data from the card onto the call centre system, said Rolfe.

By that time, the ADSL transmission of the same data size was around four percent complete.

"The bottom line for us right now, is that we would have had all the data here in two days' time [with ADSL]," said Rolfe.

 

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