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No mobile network coverage but WiFi saves the day again

No mobile connectivity no longer a problem.

Went to a Burns Night dinner last night organised by the “Friends of William Farr School”. A good time was had by all and I got to wear my new Irish tartan kilt (photos withheld due to health and safety reasons).

The bash was at Hemswell Court, a former RAF Officers Mess – there will be quite a few such buildings in Lincolnshire which was known as bomber county during the second world war. It’s a v pleasant venue with memories of men in sheepskin flying jackets and the roar of Lancaster bomber engines echoing around the place.

Being in a rural spot, as most RAF bomber command airfields were, there is sod all mobile coverage at Hemswell Court. Ordinarily in town I’d feel somewhat naked without mobile coverage. In Hemswell I didn’t give it a second thought.

This is a) because I wasn’t bothered about anyone phoning (I especially didn’t want to hear from the kids who were probably trashing the house with the parents away) and b) because there was WiFi. That’s when you realise how little you use the phone to actually talk to people.

Communication is now more through sms (ok, for which one does need a mobile sig), Twitter, Facebook and email. I do occasionally use Google Hangouts and Skype. It’s also all about using the internet for information – weather, restaurants in Lisbon (next weekend), dates for the Trent Bridge test match next summer (we are going), train arrival times, TV schedules for Duck Dynasty, approving blog comments (or marking them as spam), hotel bookings, finding the hotel, researching accounting packages for startup businesses, roast pork cooking times, IoM Ferry sailing schedules, photo editing, blog posting, presentation writing, seeing who Lincoln City are playing on Saturday, finding restaurants in SoHo, checking web stats, accepting (or rejecting) offers to connect on LinkedIn, finding offers on hedge trimmers, ordering books off Amazon, external USB sound cards on eBay, checking out settees (we need a new one in the TV room), double glazing, bulk log deliveries. lawn treatment specialists and so on. There must be more I’m sure if anyone wants to mention some I’ve missed out 🙂

Now I didn’t do all that last night at Hemswell. I was too busy jigging, flinging, eating haggis and drinking whisky, but I could have done. The internet access was serviceable enough for me not to think it was slow which in rural Lincolnshire can’t be bad.

Gotta go. IM just in on Facebook from a kid who needs picking up from the library. Fair enough.

Ciao.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

4 replies on “No mobile network coverage but WiFi saves the day again”

Another great thing I have found is that as long as I have wifi access I can use my mobile (with its address book) to phone all my contacts if I need to. They can’t call me (no mobile signal) but my mobile will work as a phone, through the wifi, anywhere in the world through my voip service. Amazing.

There are apps such as smsmac.com which allow you to send texts pretending to be from you mobile via an internet connection. That App actually says when the message has been transmitted and when it arrives in the target mobile phone. It can’t however say when the message has been selected for viewing nor whether your correspondent is compos mentis and has understood the message content.

Just took a look at it Walter. Could be handy when you absolutely need to communicate to someone remotely using sms only from your desktop although everyone seems to have an unlimited text bundle on their phones these days which in many cases would mean the smsmac service would be an additional cost.

I wonder how much business they do.

Hi Trefor,

I think they are a reasonably sized international company and have used them sporadically for years, especially when I require some confirmation that the message has been received. Provided you own a mobile, it’s a boon to those non-SIM iPAD & other tablet users when they have access to WiFi.

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