Despite being able to capture data 350-million light years away, astronomers at South Africa's flagship science facility have been saddled with slow downloads and resorted to using a courier service.
Salt is the biggest telescope in the southern hemisphere and involves several of the world's top universities and research institutions, including the American Museum of Natural History, Rutgers University and Durham University's Centre for Advanced Instrumentation.
The 11m wide telescope mirror is capable of spotting a candle-flame on the Moon. But to download and send information about stars and distant galaxies the scientists are dependent on a fibre-optic Internet cable that runs past Sutherland - but is not connected to the site.
Negotiations to connect the last 50km or so have been going on for years and now appear to have deadlocked.
The stalemate centres on a R10-million quotation Telkom gave to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to link the observatory to the main fibre optic cable.
The CSIR is setting up broadband access for the country's premier research facilities and universities - a project called the South African National Research Network (Sanren).
However, after the CSIR accepted Telkom's quote in July this year, the fixed-line operator demanded more money, concerned that the quote was too low and other companies were demanding the same sort of great deal.
Sanren project manager from the Meraka Institute, Christiaan Kuun, said: "We would like to get the site (Salt) connected to our national network as soon as possible. We are doing everything we can to reach an agreement with Telkom."
Telkom this week declined to directly answer questions relating to the matter but said in a statement to the Sunday Times: "At present, Telkom and Meraka are in the process of formalising the commercial parameters associated with the Salt location in Sutherland."
However, the Sunday Times has learnt that Telkom is unhappy with their original R10-million quote for the Salt installation, and are trying to negotiate a better deal.
The impasse is a headache for South Africa's top astronomers, who say the matter could tarnish the country's reputation in international scientific circles and jeopardise the bid to secure a multibillion-rand deal to build another massive telescope in the Karoo - the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope.
Without a fibre optic connection Salt has to use a much slower connection to download data to the SA Astronomical Observatory headquarters in Cape Town.
From there it is sent to a central Sanren facility with enough bandwidth to send overseas. "For a while we were actually taking it by vehicle (to the Sanren facility). We would put it on a disc and take it in once a week," said Salt project scientist Dr David Buckley.
In September, a pigeon called Winston beat Telkom's broadband service when he carried a 4GB memory stick from Howick to Durban in two hours - in which time the ADSL line had sent just 4% of the data.
Telkom said then it was not responsible for the firm's slow Internet speeds.
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