British pigeons faster than rural Internet speed

Rural broadband speeds are a contentious issue around the world. To demonstrate of the speed of rural broadband in the United Kingdom, pigeons carrying tiny computer flash drives were released from a Yorkshire farm at the same time that a five-minute video upload was begun from the farm, reports the BBC. A little more than hour later, the pigeons had reached their destination in Skegness, about 75 miles away, while only 24 percent of the 300-megabyte file had uploaded.

"The farm we are using has a connection of around 100 to 200 Kbps (kilobits per second)," Tref Davies, the stunt's organiser, told BBC. Lloyd Felton, founder of the Rural Broadband Partnership, said the effort to draw attention to rural broadband deprivation and low speeds was laudable. "You've got massive deprivation -- this long-quoted 'digital divide.' As we all get more dependent on the internet, that divide gets wider."