I agree with Simon Perry’s comments on the virtuous circle benefits for telehealth (The opportunities and risks of telehealth in the NHS, quocirca.computing.co.uk).

As a university lecturer, I frequently teach the topic to student nurses. I emphasise that this equipment provides tools that enable us to deliver healthcare in much the same way as we use electronic equipment to provide healthcare in hospitals.

As healthcare professionals, we must not allow the technology to replace patient contact. Used correctly, the benefits should allow us to reduce unnecessary visits and hospitalisations, allowing us to use freed-up time to visit patients who require interventions and care. Human contact is an essential component of healthcare and we must not forget how important it is for both patients and care providers.

Ray McKinnie

I take issue with Andrew Thomas’ letter about the use of social media in business (Trusting sociable staff, letters.computing.co.uk).

Phone calls are open and obvious in their nature, sitting and tapping at a keyboard is not. We have an acceptable use policy at my firm, we are open about why it is necessary and have presented each member of staff with the policy and talked it through with them to prevent abuse. This is vital to all businesses as this issue is a people problem rather than a technical one.

However, despite this, several staff members have spent hours a day posting on Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, and the like. We eventually stopped access to these sites other than during the lunch hour. This involved buying expensive software and is a cost that should not be required.

We do not live in an ideal world, Mr Thomas. There will always be staff who take a mile rather than an inch and this has to be controlled – it is called management.

Alistair, submitted on the web

A six-page guide to corporate social media etiquette is probably a positive thing (Social Networking – business opportunity and threat?, quocirca.computing. co.uk). Where it would fail would be if the six-page guide were issued as an edict from a company that does not trust its employees and does not care if its employees know it.

Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn, Facebook and so on are valid communication tools used both internally and externally to share, collaborate, inform and research. As is, for instance, a telephone. Yet how many companies issue staff with manuals on how to use a telephone?

If you trust an employee enough to pick up an inbound phone call, then you should trust them with social media. And likewise if an employee feels trusted, valued and engaged with their employer, they are less likely to use social media to bring that employer into disrepute.

Andrew Thomas, founder, Social Media in a Corporate Context

If Mike Stranks is proposing the application runs on a laptop (Wi-Fi negates need for portable storage, letters.computing.co.uk), but accesses the data across a wireless link, he is suggesting something that seems impractical.

The reliability of most public wireless links is insufficient to guarantee data access, and applications coded with enough resilience to handle this kind of failure are few.

That’s ignoring the operating system response to the link failure, which may be to return an inappropriate error message about a mapped drive to the higher level, and the inability to find out what really happened.

Remote desktops are more reliable. In the case of link failure, the desktop and application don’t fail, and reconnection allows the user to continue working without loss of data or loss of application state.

Paul Maskens

Mobile payments sound great to those who regularly take their mobile when shopping rather than a handful of cash, but there is no legislation that will enable you to resolve incorrect billing when it occurs (Carphone Warehouse to launch mobile payment services, www.computing.co.uk/2238929).

When you discover you have been charged an incorrect amount – or an unsolicited amount – you will find there is very little you can do about it other than ask nicely for your operator to give you the details of the perpetrator, which inevitably will be a premium-rate phone number to a faceless company with no address.

This technology sounds great, but I for one will be making sure my network provider understands that I will not be using my phone for this purpose and that it should either block all possibility to charge my account or understand that I will expect it to repay any money taken without my consent.

If there is not a cast-iron guarantee that disputes are resolved by the networks, this is going to be open to abuse by unscrupulous companies out to make a quick buck.

Sally H, submitted on the web

Your recent article on wireless working (A better work environment, www.computing.co.uk/2239974) contains the line: “It is better for the environment as there is less copper.”

Given the continuing uncertainty over mobile phone technology and the impact of all the related transmitters on children, bees and the environment, surely adding yet more wireless is hardly “environmentally friendly”, and potentially could result in a timebomb of future employee lawsuits against employers for unnecessary subjection to said emissions, perhaps akin to smoking in the 1970s?

The only people with positive things to say are those with a vested interest such as governments and telephone and wireless communication manufacturers.

Steve Cox

I am mourning the loss of a free internet (ISPs must comply with snooping law, www.computing.co.uk/2238170). Over the past 10 years, the internet has been slowly strangled by regulation and legislation – in the US as well as in the UK and EU.

Once governments realise that we users will continue to find ways around their monitoring – not because we have things to hide, but because we can and we do not feel that they have a right to know what we are doing – it will legislate against that technology, such as secure proxies and virtual private networking.

I cannot wait until we have full internet censorship as I am clearly not responsible enough to decide what I want to look at.

Ann Oided

I have noticed on my travels that many countries have 1Gbit/s and 100Mbit/s broadband commonly available to residential customers for very reasonable prices (UK is nowhere in fibre networks league table, www.computing.co.uk/2236393).

The rollout of 60Mbit/s and 24Mbit/s is still leaving this country in the backwaters of the broadband revolution. Can anyone explain why the network rollout in the major cities of the UK is so much slower than the ones being rolled out in other countries?

Tinloon, submitted on the web

It will be interesting to see how the government plan to offshore more services fits in with the security standards that are being implemented to meet the Government Connect code of connection that local authorities and others have been working hard to meet (Government IT more likely to go offshore, www.computing.co.uk/2236616).

I for one would not like to complete the code of connection submission for an offshore company in India.

Steve Makin

The UK cannot remain a world leader in terms of economic output and services without investment in communications infrastructure (Could recession force government U-turn on optical fibre rollout? www.computing.co.uk/2233998).

It is welcome news that Lord Carter and the government may re-consider its position and play a financial role in the rollout of the next-generationnetwork. The government must play its part - next to education and healthcare investment there cannot be many more important projects than ensuring the UK has the broadband connections it needs to compete in the global economy.

The next-generation network is not just about saving on call costs with voice over IP. It will help the business community to continue to thrive with the provision of more secure and intelligent bandwidth that enables applications such as video on demand, energy consumption monitoring, IPTV, voice over Wi-Fi and innovative medical devices.

Martin Balaam