24 hours of broadband

I've spent the last 24 hours taking the temperature of Broadband Britain on a trip to Swansea in preparation for today's government summit with the broadband industry.

0800 Paddington Station: My phone has locked onto the BT Openzone wi-fi hotspot in the station, one of 8,000 that come free with my contract. Unfortunately it doesn't work - I get taken to a registration page and then on a never-ending loop of "authorisation failed" messages. It's a familiar experience - free and easy public wi-fi still has a way to go in the UK

1200: Our first stop in Swansea is the home of Chris Walsh. He's got a 20Mbps Virgin Media broadband line and seems pretty happy. Both Virgin and BT will be bringing fast connections to urban areas like this over the coming years as they roll out their fibre networks. That should mean 70% of the country gets a decent connection.

I decide it would be rude to scoff any of Chris's broadband but checking the 3G speed on my phone I'm getting an excellent signal - around 1.5Mbps upload or download.

1500: But just 10 miles up the road in the village of Felindre we're on the other side of Britain's great digital divide. Here they struggle to get broadband at all because many homes are too far from the BT exchange, and Virgin Media is never going to lay cable up the lanes here.

At the farm from which they run quite a sizeable agricultural contracting business, we find Howard and Julie Price, and we hear a long forgotten sound. The clicking and whistling of a modem tells us they are still using a dial-up connection to get online, and that means a wait of as much as 40 minutes if they want to download a chunky document or some photos.

Howard is not impressed by the argument that it's his choice to live in the wilds - he points out that the M4 is just at the bottom of the valley, and that his business needs broadband just like any other "it's an essential these days."

Strange coincidence

Then there's a strange coincidence. A van drives up and a man jumps out to tell me about his business which brings broadband to rural areas. Andrew England is scouting out locations to put up a mast so that his firm TFL can beam a wireless signal across the village, promising speeds of around 10Mbps. He tells me his firm can do the job much more cheaply than the likes of BT.

1800: Back in a Swansea hotel to edit our pictures I find that I'm also back in range of a decent 3G signal. So when 5live call wanting me to come on and talk about the prime minister's call for pages glorifying Raoul Moat to be removed from Facebook I decide on an experiment. Using the 3G network I call into the BBC studio via a VOIP application on a tablet computer. The audio quality is fine - if a little tinny - but I'm pleased to have pushed back the frontiers of broadcasting.

2200: We finish our edit and use the hotel wi-fi to send the piece back to London. Experience has shown that this can be a frustrating and time-consuming business. But this time the 65Mb file chugs down the pipe in around 25 minutes. Of course, with a 100Mbps fibre connection it would have got there in a few minutes, but we're happy enough.

0600: We're back in Felindre to broadcast live into BBC Breakfast. But with no 3G network, and no broadband to speak of, we are very grateful that a BBC satellite truck drives up, and points a dish at the sky. Then there's a hitch - London can't see our signal. We can't get on television for our 0620 slot, but find that the pub has just had broadband installed, albeit a very slow connection. We use their wi-fi to broadcast on 5live via software called Luci Live. It works, but with a three second delay on the line, which on radio feels like eternity. Luckily, by 0645 we have fixed the satellite problem and are on air with quality sound and pictures - another connectivity nightmare is over.