DSL

Broadband is for the birds…

…or at least it is in South Africa.

Aggravated by data transimission delays on the ADSL service from the country’s biggest telecom carrier, an irritated IT staffer decided to pit ADSL speeds against an 11-month-old carrier pigeon named “Winston” , the BBC reported.

Staffers from Unlimited IT of Durban, South Africa, strapped a 4GB memory stick to Winston’s leg and set him loose as they began a file transfer to the same location with the same data on the stick.

Guess who won?

The phrase “early bird” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Winston flew the data 60 miles to its destination in two hours. By the time Winston got to his destination, Telkom had only sent 4% of the data.

It was a clean race, too. Like an elite athlete should expect, Winston obeyed regulations that his “birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds.”

Needless to say, the race ruffled a few feathers at the partially government-owned carrier, which shrugged off any possible blame for the slow broadband services at Unlimited IT.

“Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted,” Telkom’s Troy Hector told South Africa’s Sapa news agency in an e-mail, the BBC reported.

Verizon marketing dumping DSL down the memory hole?

Maybe it’s Verizon’s landline unions that should watch out: Shortly after writing this morning’s post on Verizon’s DSL vs. wireless debate, I caught up with DSLReports’ note that Verizon is deleting DSL mentions in marketing material. For the record, I think this is only about as ominous as when the cable companies renamed VoIP “Digital Voice” to escape the bad name (scratchy sound, dropped calls, lack of 911) it had received. OK, maybe the erasures are a bit Orwellian, but isn’t Big Brother just a part of big business?

The updated language does underline an important point, however: People don’t really care how they are connected so long as they are connected, and in a way that they feel is fast and consistent and fairly priced. In some markets, this might mean DSL; In others (large, population-rich urban environments), Verizon’s FiOS will be the standard; Others will be happy with microwave connectivity.

But if Verizon’s going to use this as excuse to charge FiOS-like rates for its broadband DSL package, they’re going to be doing themselves a serious disservice, ultimately hurting the FiOS brand more than anything as consumers vent to each other via word of mouth, online comments, and Twitter. That’s an advantage I’m sure the cable companies would love to seize, particularly as Comcast lashes out with a sharp responses to the cable creeper ads Verizon’s been running. See both below, and feel free to share your thoughts.