A Greater Kneed

I’m less mobile yet again. Attempt 3 at controlling the large swelling in my trousers has occurred, with an overnight hospital stay and my knee being cut open, so I’m once again at the mercy of Homes Under the Hammer, and trying to stave off the boredom, and also I’ve not been out on the bike for months (the possibility of injury and/or aggravating the problem being an issue).

Once again, excellent care from the NHS, excellent staff, and what really was just minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

I do, however, feel I need to revisit an old blog post, and perhaps apologise to Stuart Berry, or at least moderate my argument?

Some of my arguments have lost their edge due to tech, of course. Connectivity is cheaper, WAPs are no more expensive, and manageability has got a lot easier (though you may pay for it- e.g: Meraki). Devices are better at handling connection issues and captive portals- the whole thing has matured.

My argument that 3G is cheap is probably stronger now- competition drives down mobile data such that I now pay £10/month for more mobile data, calls, and texts than I use, but I did miss one key thing: the hospital I was in had wildly varying mobile coverage: in the ADCU, where I spent 1 day in August, has zero coverage for O2 or Vodafone, but the ward I was on this time had workable 3G. If it hadn’t had that, the free wifi (which incidentally, works very well) would have been very useful to keep in touch with my better half: I’d warned her to keep an eye on email. This is probably a consequence of the building being quite old in places. From personal experience, mobile providers will charge outrageous sums to install micro-cells or similar in buildings.

It’s worth mentioning that the on-bus wifi I mention in the old post is useable now, too. As technology moves on, things get more useable. I remember vividly trying to get useable dumb-terminal access working over mobile data in the mid-late 90s, where you were lucky to get 9600 bits/second.

4 Responses to “A Greater Kneed”

  1. Species5618 Says:

    Gloucester NHS Wi-Fi is surprisingly good for a large scale deployment, not just coverage, reliability but speed, its capped at 2Mbps, but you get 2Mbps all the time,

    re mobile coverage, old building, new buildings new trains are just a nightmare,
    yet people blame the Mobile provider..

  2. stymaster Says:

    Yes. Radio generally hard to get right.

  3. Willenhall Lad Says:

    In the Wolverhampton hospitals you can connect to the free NHS wi-fi as i do quite often with the various visits I have to do for the family. I don’t know why you need mobile data coverage when the NHS provided one is so good?

  4. stymaster Says:

    Yes, NHS wifi is, in my experience very good now, and no, you don’t need mobile data, however, the ability to make a phone call when you’re in hospital (especially for more than 1 day) is nice, and without a lot of messing about, you need a mobile signal for that.