大象传媒

Touring Broadband Britain

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 2 Jun 08, 09:20 GMT

I'm writing this in a hotel with a view across to the Isle of Skye, borrowing a slow broadband connection in a place where there's no mobile phone signal and the local phone-box is my only other means of communication.

It's the starting point for our tour of Broadband Britain, which gets underway on TV, on radio and online from today. The aim is to assess the speed and state of broadband at the moment - and take a look at the technologies which could promise faster speeds and more mobility in the years to come.

From this remote place, where they struggle to get broadband at all, we travel to Dundee on Wednesday, where they are being promised a high-speed connection by fibre-optic cable laid through the sewers. Then we travel south by train, trying out mobile broadband, and arrive on Thursday in Milton Keynes, where some residents are using Wimax to get online. Our last stop on Friday is Ebbsfleet in Kent, where BT will start laying 100Mbps fibre into homes in a new housing development later this year.

Along the way, we'll be testing speeds wherever we go using a couple of methods, and we'll be inviting you to join in - look out for the test page on the 大象传媒 website which goes live on Tuesday morning on the .

We will also be trying wherever possible - and this is what is making me just a tad nervous - to use broadband to send all our video and audio back and to do our live broadcasts. With me are top producer Jonathan Sumberg and cameraman/editor/engineer/general miracle man Neil Drake, seen in the picture trying out some of our equipment at 大象传媒 TV Centre before we left.

Our trip comes at a time when the debate about whether Britain needs faster broadband - and who should pay for it - is getting more heated. We hope to shed some light on the present and future state of Broadband Britain.

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