TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: What Happened to Me

Re: What Happened to Me

Colum Mylod (cmylod@bigfoot.comREMOVE)
Wed, 12 Apr 2006 09:44:02 +0100

On Sat, 8 Apr 2006 23:40:59 -0400, T <nospam.kd1s@cox.nospam.net>
wrote:

> In article <telecom25.131.9@telecom-digest.org>, henry999@eircom.net
> says:

>> You know of course that the cell phone system in Europe is different
>> from the US. Here, there are signs at the front door of all hospitals
>> (and in many places inside) saying 'Mobile phones MUST be switched
>> off'. The idea is that they can interfere with various medical
>> equipment. I don't know if that is true, or if it is like the
>> prohibition on airplanes -- but in any case, that's the rule. And most
>> people follow it.

Compliance in hospitals is dropping off. British hospitals let outside
companies set up bedside phones whose rates would scare the corpses in
the mortuary (premium rate numbers to call, phone cards to make calls
from). Result is widespread use of mobiles.

Immigration in Heathrow has plenty of crossed-out symbols (as if the
phones are banned!) but widespread disregard is the norm. And why not.

>> Having said that -- my wife is a nurse and in her hospital the staff
>> do have cell phones. They are called DECT and apparently they use a
>> sub-set of the frequency band that is sure to not conflict with all
>> the monitors, analyzers, etc. in the building.
DECT stood for Digital European Cordless Telephones but to spread the
technology the E changed to Extensible. Base stations can put out more
power than GSM cellphones, the handsets are typically milliwatts.
Still possible interference to sensitive gear but a lot less than a
GSM phone cranked up. Security people in hospitals can have
walky-talkies on far higher power but not spread spectrum like GSM.

> Interesting. I recently had to visit my ailing grandmother in the
> ntensive care unit of a local hospital. No warnings about cell phones
> and in fact saw staff use them.

Away from necessarily-sensitive medical equipment everything else
should be hardened to GSM. Especially airplanes but it's not happening
soon enough IMHO.

Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

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