Is it possible for Ofcom to check with other countries, both in the EU and say, US & Canada to see what they do?
I find it incredible that Patientline have said that it is not possible to call from overseas. When my late mother was in hospital in Luxembourg I thought that calling her bedside phone from here in the UK was just the regular overseas call charge. I must admit it was a few years ago now and my attention had not yet been drawn to these NGN's so I could be wrong.

I AGREE WITH ALL THAT THIS IS A DAYTIME ROBBERY TO CHARGE 49P/MIN TO CALL A PATIENT IN THE HOSPITAL, OTHER SERVICES BY PATIENT LINE ARE ALSO NOT DIFFERENT FROM THIS, THEY CHARGE £2 TO WATCH TELEVISION FOR AN HOUR WITH BASIC CHANNELS. HOPE OFCOM WILL DO "SOMETHING" FOR THIS PROBLEM

Contact your MP @ the House of Commons - do it!! - they can effect change - we can only complain!

Use www.writetothem.com for the easiest and simplest way to contact any of your local elected representatives online.

Tanllan wrote on Jul 9^th, 2006 at 12:32pm:


I see they have just added a new Write To Your Lord feature ( www.writetothem.com/lords ) although of course Lords do not have constituencies as such.  Still there are up to 10 Euro MPs per constituency so not much difference in the two approaches really.  In fact I see you can search for a Lord with the nearest residential address to any particular uk town.  I know little of Baroness Thomas of Walliswood though.

Sadly some other grubby little fellow called Murdoch has now replaced me as one of the two district councillors listed for the Capel, Leigh & Newdigate ward on Mole Valley District Council.

bbb_uk wrote on Jul 18^th, 2006 at 7:15pm:


You are correct that only TCM and Cartoon Network are Pay tv channels out of this lot on both Sky and Freeview (or TopUpTv in the case of Cartoon Network and TCM). And don't forget that Film Four is going to be available free on Freeview from July 23rd.

I stupidly assumed that the £3.50 a day charge included the likes of staple low budget Sky pay channels like British Eurosport, UK Gold, National Geographic, Discovery, UK Documentary etc, etc but now we learn it is only the free multichannel tv channels just so Patientline can rack up their profits yet further by not providing any actual pay channels at a service cost of over £1,000 per year per patient.  The NHS must be full of complete commercial illiterates is all I can say.

Again New Labour scams and New Labour friends are at the back of no action happening  here.  If a hated Tory like Geoffrey Archer was running the scam and it had been agreed under the Tory government New Labour would have closed this down in five minutes.  They would also have bellowed like hell if a Tory government had allowed such things to happen in NHS hospitals.

bbb_uk wrote on Jul 18^th, 2006 at 7:41pm:


That's not Free is it though bbb, although I don't suppose that Teleworst/NTHell (the people with what must have been the cheapest ever television advert to make) charge anywhere like the £15 a month that is charged by Sky for their bottom of the barrel offering in which you could get TCM but not Film Four.  And NTHell or Teleworst usually throw in a free phone line too unlike Sky.  Although today's free Sky Broadband offer does sound interesting if you happen to live on the right exchange for it.

But a Freeview box costs 30 quid and has a life of may be 10 years..............................................

To be fair to Sky there are several oddball free movie channels put out you can get without any subscription on Freesat or a desubscribed Sky box These are in the 330 area of the Sky channel guide and include ZoneHorror, ZoneThriller, TrueMovies1, TrueMovies2 and Movies4Men.  But they are nothing to do with Sky and I think are transmitted on Hotbird rather than Astra where all Sky's own channels come from.