UNIVERSITY students have travelled the world to come and visit BT's international communication hub in Madley.

The group learning Mobile and Satellite Communications travelled from Greece, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Poland to see how one of the UK's biggest telecom services works.

Since 1978, the Madley centre has played a role in broadcasting events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the funeral of Princess Diana.

Jon Price, a BT satcomms engineer, said the students were 'blown away' by what they saw.

"They were highly impressed with the infrastructure at Madley and how we move signals around the site up to space," he added.

"They'd never seen antennas at the scale we have and were overwhelmed with the technical capabilities of the site."

The 218-acre site has more than 60 satellite dishes and has three giant aerials, measuring 32 metres wide and weighing 290 tonnes.

The 18 students also visited 'Madley 1', one of the largest working satellites in the world.

Ifiok Otung, Professor of Satellite Communications at the University of South Wales, said: "Madley is a fascinating site and it was especially interesting for our students to see the application of some of the technologies we deal with in research.

"I thought the site was very inconspicuous from the outside, but very imposing and exciting on the inside, with world-class facilities.