On Saturday night the family had the lodge at Peckforton Castle, and Sunday morning the girls were there getting ready. The whole area has really poor mobile signal, even outside, and the lodge had no wifi! It was meant to have wifi but something was not right (and no, I could not fix it).
This was something of an inconvenience. We had people arriving on the Saturday night to other hotels and people arriving all Sunday, and we were trying to keep in touch, check when people were arriving, try and get a message to someone to get some cufflinks as James forgot them, and so on. A total lack of any workable Internet was a pain. Even when I went up to the castle when the bride got ready I had no communications with the family in the lodge.
To be fair, most of the communications did not want to be the type of interruption of a phone call, they suited a message which could be read later.
But this really does show how massively times have changed in just a few years. It has not been long since a time when there were no text messages or even mobile phones in popular use. Just a generation ago the phone in the lodge would have been the only communication one would expect to be able to use.
Clearly the land line is on the way out, replaced by mobiles and non voice communications.
Congratulations.
ReplyDeleteThose phone prices are a joke, especially considering they weren't providing wifi for you (add to that the location has a poor mobile signal and you were basically held to ransom if you needed to use the phone or otherwise communicate)
Could you not of used the landline for a dial-up connection (do they still exist)?
ReplyDeleteAgreed - until I recently changed suppliers I had a line but I only had calls from one international friend, and my mum. 95% of the incoming calls were spam of some kind or another - didn't even bother answering it most of the time it rang.
ReplyDeleteThose charges are an absolute shocker, but it must be borne in mind that the hotel may only have 1 or 2 landlines and if guests are talking endlessly on the phone, the lines may be blocked for incoming calls such reservations etc. The charges could just be meant as a disincentive to use the land line for too long.
ReplyDeleteI think that was a real landline at the lodge so just for us, but really, would any business even a hotel use old fashioned land lines for their normal telecoms? We, at home, have used VoIP for a decade at least.
DeleteI don't think mobile is yet up to spec... had an issue the other day contacting a work colleague, the phone tone signals did something I know to be physically impossible: Ring, then Number busy.
ReplyDeleteNo, once the line is ringing, you have the connection locked down till you hang up or the exchange times out. So I have NO idea what O2 was trying to tell me by 'ring ring... ring...beep beep beep beep' (other than 'we don't understand telephones'
Actually that is a more general issue that we do not have a call progress tone in UK. If you leave silence too long then people give up so you need something whilst trying to connect and taking too long so ringing is the best compromise. In other countries you get a call progress tone then either ring or busy.
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