4G Internet trial brings hope to digitally bereft rural folk

At CNET UK towers in London, we're surrounded by an invisible electromagnetic soup 24 hours a day. GSM, GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, 3G, VHF and UHF are just some of the electromagnetic waves jangling around our brains as you read this article.  It's these waves that breathe life into our gadgets, connect us to our friends and beam the very latest news from The X Factor directly into our skulls.

But hundreds of thousands of people around the country are not so lucky. For many rural folk, getting two bars on your mobile phone is cause for celebration. Getting a good digital radio signal or high-speed broadband connection is an impossible dream. So we've been to Newquay to seek out some of these people and find out what life is like at the other side of the digital divide.

As we revealed earlier this week, telecoms regulator Ofcom has said Britain won't be getting a high-speed 4G LTE network until at least 2015. That's disastrous news for the digitally disenfranchised, as 4G could be the only way of providing fast Internet to hard-to-reach rural areas.

A successful trial in Cornwall has shown that 4G LTE can be implemented in the UK. But that won't happen until the government and network providers can agree on who gets what part of the radio spectrum. Until then, the only way you can enjoy super-speedy Internet is to move to a more advanced and digitally enlightened country -- like Estonia, Finland or Uzbekistan. 

What's it like living in a digitally bereft household? What are the mobile networks doing to bring 4G to the nation? And how fast is this new technology going to be anyway? Click play to find out. There are also some cute pictures of guinea pigs.

Have you experienced e-poverty? Open up in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.