A South African IT outfit has shamed telecoms operator Telkom by sending 4GB of data 60 miles by pigeon in two hours - faster than it arrived by the ISP's broadband service. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/10/pigeon_v_broadband/
I saw results of tests of massive data transfers in Europe once, it was faster to write it to discs and load them into a truck and drive them a hundred miles...