ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A junior architect at local mid-sized construction firm has been chosen by upper-management to hand deliver four gigabytes of data to the London office this week.
Peter Sinclair says it’s not out of the ordinary in this day and age to be thrown a portable hard drive on Monday and be eating breakfast on the other side of the world by Wednesday.
“Thanks to the shortcomings, corruption and old-fashioned criminal activity associated with NBN rollout, people like me get sent around the world to deliver hard drives and USB sticks because it’s faster and more reliable than sending the files online,” he said.
“It’s just like back in the day when there were international couriers. Except it’s 2018 and we’re talking about architectural renders, images and video files. Not secret diplomatic documents or human organs.”
According to the 27-year-old’s boss, it’s the most cost-effective way to send large files to far-flung and isolated corners of the world such as London.
The chief financial officer of Betoota’s Multiplex office, Dale Costigan, said they weren’t prepared to pay the estimated $30k it costs to be connected to a first world internet service in this country – so they put hard drives with important and sensitive data on them in the hands of junior employees tell them where to drop it off.
“We’d post them the files we transfer are industrially and financially sensitive,” said Costigan.
“And the internet, especially in the South West here is simply not up to the job of being used to transfer large files. Hell, it even goes to shit if somebody accidentally clicks play on a news.com.au video instead of pressing stop on the autoload,”
“It’s not that we enjoy sending these young people to places like London for six hours, it’s just that this is the only option there is. Royal Commission now.
More to come.
