On 17/Mar/20 19:03, Mike Bolitho wrote:

I keep seeing this over and over again in this long thread. What's your suggestion? How does a hospital, with dozens of third party applications/devices across multiple cloud platforms do this?

We have two redundant private lines out of each hospital connecting back to primary and DR DCs and a metro connecting everything together in each region. But for things we do not own that are not hosted locally, what are we supposed to do? We have to go out DIA to get there. Everything we own is connected via fully SLAed private lines. We have zero issues there. I think people vastly underestimate just how much in the healthcare vertical is outside of a medical providers control/ownership.

On my WhatsApp profile, one of my tag lines is "Hater of the 'What Do You Do?' culture and WhatsApp Calling". I detest both equally.

But focusing on the latter, if you call me on WhatsApp, I'll cut you off and call you back via GSM. The only time I'll entertain any WhatsApp calls is if GSM coverage is poor, or if I know you are traveling and can't roam, but have wi-fi.

I'd never blame my mobile providers for poor quality WhatsApp calls, nor would I do the same to my ISP. I have zero patience for WhatsApp voice calls to sort themselves out when initiated, and yet plenty of people enjoy using it for whatever reasons, mostly to "save money". Personally, wasting time exchanging "Can you hear me now?" is more costly than having a short and concise call over GSM. If we are going to talk for hours, let's have a beer.

The point is, as much as some "critical" conversations (want to) take place on WhatsApp, Facebook have zero control of the quality of that experience once the bits leave their data centre. I don't know if they will ever fix that given all the variables that exist thousands of miles from where the service is hosted, but you might not be forgiven for thinking you can run a voice-based business on WhatsApp. In fact, recording a voice note and sending it via WhatsApp is like two-way walkie-talkie radio, but perhaps more reliable :-).

I really don't know how to fix this for hospitals relying on best-effort infrastructure to deliver critical, priority services to their patients.

Mark.