One of England's most remote mainland locations has become home for what BT claims is probably the world's fastest internet café.

The café is based at BT's Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station, based on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall.

Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is located in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which contains some of the rarest plants in the UK.

The station is the largest of its type in the world with 60 antennas handling thousands of international phone calls, TV broadcasts and data. It is also the world’s oldest surviving satellite earth station.

The first antenna, known as Arthur, was built to track the Telstar satellite and received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the US in 1962. Arthur today is a grade II listed building and is still in operational service.

The café's computers connect to BT's global IP (Internet Protocol) network, and will be able to download data at speeds of up to 100Mbit/s. This is between 25 and 50 times faster than a typical broadband installation at home.

Equipment in the café includes 12 iMacs with the latest Intel Core Duo processors and an Xserve server by Apple. Routing, switching and VoIP (Voice over IP) technology has been provided by Cisco and headsets by Sennheiser.

Visitors to the satellite earth station, which attracts more than 80,000 people a year, (often composed of the many tourists to the area known as emmets in Cornwall and grockles in neighbouring Devon), will be able to use these facilities free.

Adrian Hosford, director of Corporate Responsibility for BT, who hosted today's launch, said: "Connected to the network of the future, what we believe is the world's fastest internet cafe will allow people to experience for themselves online speeds, which are part of a future enabling us to do all things differently.

"For example, it would be possible to use the cafe's computers to download in less than 15 minutes a file the equivalent size of the DVD version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with its 19,000 illustrations, 629 audio and video clips and 100,000 articles.

"A standard broadband connection would typically take in excess of five hours."