Neil: I'm Neil.
Sam: And I'm Sam.
Neil: If you're old enough to remember the early days of dial-up internet
then you'll know the unforgettable sound of the 'handshake',
the clicks and squeaks your computer made
as it struggled to connect to the internet through the telephone line.
Sam: Yes, I remember that strange noise!
Dial-up internet was slow and websites took forever to load.
And because you couldn't use both the internet and the telephone at the same time,
this was usually followed by someone shouting,
"Get off the computer, I'm making a phone call!"
Neil: In the thirty years since then,
the internet has changed dramatically.
Fibre optics and broadband have created superfast internet speeds and an interconnected online world,
where physical distances between people are no longer a barrier to communication -
a situation expressed in the phrase, the global village.
Sam: But take a closer look and you'll still find people around the world
with a slow connection or no internet at all.
In this programme we'll be finding out how some communities are working together
to fix their internet connection problems for the benefit of local people.