merc
you will not believe what a mobile /dec network will do if you pay for it.
you could have a page a text / full records down loaded in an instant.
Its all a money thing.
I used to work in a coms enviroment 10 years ago and internally we could have delivered 100mbps plus through yur mobile phone to 3000 connections every second. Nobody would pay for it. one connection or 30,000 it is the same cost to the network
The only system which is fault positive in the UK is the power network. And ther is someting daft like 10% of all telephone lines in the UK are level 1 nation interest
What your trying to do erisson engineers have had on there company phones from 1998 onwards without gprs. But they all have a zero account.
With GPRS and a local GSM node you could run the whole network off GSM network connections. The NHS won't pay for the BSC upgrade so you won't get it.