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More rose-tints fading from HSPA mobile broadband in Norfolk

NewsWireless comes to you this week from Norfolk - specifically, Cromer - and your dedicated team is stuck in the reception area of the Cromer Country Club sports centre, because that's the only place we can get Internet at a better speed than GPRS (one bit a day) rates.

It was because they said they had Internet access in the bar that we came for this (internal) seminar. It turns out they have TheCloud in the bar and a brand-new, Diamond-specified WiFi AP in reception; and so we asked what the network ID for the (free) network was.

There followed a brief phone conversation between Reception and Maintenance, the gist of which was (apparently) "He says they installed it last week, but haven't been in touch since, and he hasn't got any codes."

Meanwhile, HSDPA access is keeping us alive - just. To get it, you have to sit in reception, or the signal dies. We'd switch to our O2 sub, but we've forgotten the phone number of the SIM card, and without that, it won't connect any more. Paul, the engineer, has literally vanished, taking the O2 dongle with him (we seriously think we may have to ask police to trace him!) as well as the Vodafone dongle AND the comparative report on mobile broadband modems.

Outside, there's a plague of flying insects, thick enough to make you sneeze.

Inside, there's a carpenter drilling holes in the plaster, a rock singer screaming over the speaker, and a journalist on the sofa trying to place urgent phone calls with TheCloud, asking them just who would be interested in £4.50 an hour for Internet?