Man pitted against fibre in promotion

As a challenge, Formula One driver's world champion Lewis Hamilton raced around the 4.2 km Kyalami Race Track in Johannesburg against a data capsule of 5.4 GB of data transmitted across Vodacom Business' super-fast, high-capacity Metro Ethernet fibre network (Metro E) from Midrand to Sandton yesterday, Tuesday, 20 April 2010.

On the third non-standing race lap, Lewis' time of 2.0 minutes exactly matched that of the data capsule; however with his first-lap time of 2.11 minutes and a second lap of 2.09 minutes, Metro E just managed to take the overall race on average lap times.

The 5.4 GB of data was enough to contain about 5 full-length movies of about 1 GB each. Lewis, as part of the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team, was competing against Metro E in a Mercedes-Benz AMG C63, which has a top speed of 250 km/h.

Lewis Hamilton said about the race, "This was a unique challenge - I'm used to racing against a person and not technology. The moment I got into my car I knew that the speed at which information travels would be very hard to beat - however that was the challenge."

Lewis Hamilton and Ermano Quartero

Ermano Quartero, managing executive of products and services at Vodacom Business, says the day was all about high technology, high speed, high performance and high reliability and celebrated a milestone for the company and South African enterprises.

"The data capsule provides the capacity and speed to fulfil all big business' mission-critical and time-sensitive connectivity needs - reliably and cost-effectively. With it, businesses have access to a super-fast, high capacity fibre connection, giving them greater control over what they send and how they connect and communicate."