It’s Not the Hour for Pigeon-Power

Winston the Data Pigeon is bold, but still a bird-brain

It sounds a bit like a corny joke: “What’s the difference between a carrier pigeon and a Telkom ADSL line?” The Homing-Pigeon-that-beat-Telkom-ADSL story cooked up by a Kwazulu Natal call centre company has played really well in media… it got Slashdotted and Digged right up onto the front page, appeared on news sites all over the world and featured in daily papers all over South Africa.

As a PR stunt goes it gets 100%.

That’s about as much as you can read into it. It was a great caper if you want to stick the boot into Telkom and highlight the state of our local Internet connectivity. It must, however, be taken with a pinch of salt (but just a pinch, because while pigeon is succulent, it can be quite gamey).

Winston is simply an awful choice of data bearer. Plucky he may be, but never, never look to a Winston for Internet connectivity. Here’s why:

· No Redundancy – You don’t want a sociopathic teenager with a pellet gun being a very real business risk. If your data network is business-critical, think about redundancy.

· Very High Latency – Certainly Winston carried a lot of data on his flight. In fact, given a 16GB SD card, he could have carried a lot more. But from the point that Winston took off, until he arrived in Durban two hours later, nothing happened. Not a single, solitary bit arrived between him (and the data packet) taking wing and anything arriving. That’s a lot of latency. For a business network, especially one carrying something time-sensitive like voice, you’d rather have a lower capacity network with very low latency than a vice versa. If you’re browsing the Web, having a YouTube video download in one fast burst is not useful if you have to wait two hours to make each selection.

· Reliability – Winston did a grand job this time. But next time? Bit of bird flu? Perhaps loses his way? Sees a hot chick-pigeon going the other way? Business connections must work. Every. Single. Time.

· One Way – Winston is a homing pigeon – so he’s not much use at getting the data back to the start point again. And to be fair to Telkom, the “A” in ADSL is for “asymmetric”. Downloads are much faster than uploads. A business needs to be sure that it understands what bandwidth it needs for both upstream and downstream.

· Support and Trouble Shooting – When your data link goes down, you need someone to shout at. Winston is a good listener, but not great at solving problems. His only solution is to stare at you with his beady little eyes and coo. With a good ISP, you have lots of resources and tools to solve problems. When something is not working right, you need someone to be able to resolve it.

· Scaleability – What happens when need three more Winstons because the first one has no more legroom? What do you do when your business grows, or you launch a new service that needs more connectivity? A business-focussed ISP can rapidly upgrade your connection, or recommend ways to get more out of what you have.

Telkom’s response to the Pigeon Race was more than a little huffy (understandably, everyone is pointing and laughing at them), but they make a valid point. A call centre needs more than a single ADSL connection – it needs a data network that is suited to the business requirement, with service levels on performance characteristics that go far beyond being able to carry 4GB of data from Point A to Point B, once.

ADSL is a great technology and satisfies a number of business requirements, but it has limitations that business owners should be aware of. If you understand these limitations and can live with them, fine, or you can adapt the technology by “bonding” multiple ADSL lines together (as Altech Technology Concepts started doing over two years ago, allowing ultra high speed, resilient and affordable Internet access), so much the better.

Alternatively, when data connectivity is a fundamental requirement for the business to operate (like in, oh, say a call centre) you need to look at other technologies such as Leased Line over copper or fibre optic or some of the new point-to-point wireless solutions to ensure a guaranteed class of service. Any ISP worth their salt will use the most appropriate technology, or mix of technologies, to provide the customer with the right connectivity for the business.

Well done Winston, you were a good sport. But you’re an amateur, and not ready for the real business world.

Deidre Dawson is General Manager of Altech Technology Concepts