pigeon faster than the internet - official!

This is blatantly taken from Private Eye - originally spotted by David Dallison who saw it in Gulf News, 11/9/09.

"Internet speeds are hopelessly slow in South Africa," a spokesman for Unlimited IT told reporters in Pietermaritzburg, "because Telekom controls most of the phone lines, and the won't make the necessary investment to upgrade them. There's a national bandwidth shortage, so speed and connectivity are poor, and the internet is also expensive. That's why we decided to stage a contest, to see who could transmit data fastest - the Telekom internet system, or a carrier pigeon. "At the same moment we began trying to transmit data to our Durban office, we strapped a data card to theleg of an eleven-month-old pigeon walled Winston, and released him from our office here in Pietermaritzburg. He took one hour and eight minutes to fly 80 kms to our office in Durban, where the data card was removed from his leg and the information was downloaded. The total time taken was two hours, six minutes and fifty-seven seconds, by which time only four per cent of the same data had been transferred using a Telekom line. We've asked Telekom to comment, but so far they haven't replied"

Brilliant!