Professor whose connection was so slow he beamed it in... from a satellite over Africa!

FRUSTRATED by the slow broadband he received through his telephone cable, 79-year-old Christopher Spry knew just what to do – get it from a satellite over Africa instead.

Professor Spry, who lives in the Welsh hamlet of Heol Senni in the Brecon Beacons, could only get download speeds of around 500 kilobits a second.

As a result, he struggled to upload nature videos for the community website he runs.

So the self-confessed technology enthusiast did some research online and now gets his broadband via a satellite more than 20,000 miles in space over in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is routed via a firm in Luxembourg. His broadband signal travels about 50,000 miles from a dish in his back garden to the Astra 2F satellite over the equator.

The retired immunologist pays £420 a year for his satellite internet, getting speeds of 28 megabits a second – 56 times faster. He said: ‘It makes all the difference. I am happy as a rabbit.’