The I-Phone and now I-Pad have been a resounding success. So much of a success that ATT is in a major league scramble mode. Never in their wildest dreams did they think that the actual data, not voice usage would be so high. Forget that it is GSM and ATT focused on the application side of things. It is now "about the network". Most do not realize that up to 70% of voice calls are made indoors. But that is not the issue, it is data. The outdoor macro network by ATT was designed for voice, not data and it is not CDMA. Wonder why calls are dropping while roaming? The outdoor cell site has to shrink the footprint (coverage) to maintain the link budget! If that is outside, think now how this is working "inside a building" that has new LEED requirements?
Now that the I-Phone has found it's way into a multitude of applications for physicians and care-givers alike it will be about the "network". The reason for Apple's success is it is all about the user interface. The I-Pad will tend to probably make "tablet" EMR computing a reality. Again, it all about the user interface. Apple made it happen.
Now the network. Hospitals will need to have reliable in-building coverage for the new I-Phone and I-Pad healthcare applications to work in a reliable fashion. The issue is ATT's network is crumbling under it's own capacity at stated in the aforementioned. (No wonder they put a cap on data plans). To solve this challenge hospitals will require reliable 3G/4G coverage. Where coverage is not reliable, a distributed antenna system will be required with no doubt a dedicated BTS (microcell). These BTS(s) are pretty expensive, over 100K. However since both (I-Phone and I-Pad) have Wi-Fi, look to probably have this capacity off-loaded to 802.11g/n, and then backhauled to the WAN via IP. This additionally means that WiFi will absolutely require "realiable" voice and probably video in the healthcare setting moving forward. No longer will it will be OK just for data and spotty coverage. WiFi will have to operate at the 5 (9s) level, at in the telecom world. In any case today's hospital moving forward just will have to provide reliable GSM/CDMA coverage as well as 802.11a/b/g/n for data, voice, and video.
