Last week from 6pm on Thursday to 6pm on Friday, that’s 24 hours, I was positioned in a rural village which had no wifi and no mobile Internet. In fact, this place had no communications of any kind.

So there I was with an iPhone 5, iPad Mini, Blackberry Curve and all the accessories under the sun, yet unable to say or send a word. So what do you do. Answer. There is nothing you can do.

At the end of the 24 hours, I noticed was the battery level on my iPhone 5 was extraordinarily amazing. Nearly 24 hours later it was down to 93%. Not surprising it wasn’t doing anything.

But during that time of being cutoff from the world it felt really odd. I was getting withdrawal symptoms. I couldn’t tweet, couldn’t read/receive emails, check this, do that, read the online news, no calls, no SMS, no nothing. The first few hours felt dreadful. I kept picking up my phones, turning them on and off to see if I could get a signal. Then I tried moving around the lock house. (It wasnt a lock house, but it felt like it). Still no signal. And then I conceded defeat.

The lock house where I was staying did have a small library, and a sign saying “please feel free to borrow the books”. Clearly this place knew that there was no signal, no way of talking to the outside world, so they had a plan. Visitors would have to read an actual book, with physical pages. Yep, that’s right, no kindle app, no kindle ereader just a real book.

So I grabbed a pint of bitter in the bar, (it wasn’t all bad) and settled down and started to read. And you know what, it was really enjoyable, more enjoyable than my kindle app or kindle ereader. And as the hours passed and the 24 hours nearly came to an end it felt really good. I had detoxed myself of technology for a day.

And then I got in my car, and left the lock house and a mile later my phones started bleeping and going stir crazy. I had 800 unread tweets, 800 RSS feed items to read, 400 emails and more.

So ask yourself, is it really worth being connected. Just think of all the crap your mind has to put up with every day. Take the challenge. Turn the world off for a day. Relax and read a book.

PS. The lock house was actually a lovely old hotel with creaky floorboards and dusted in white snow.

As phones get more sophisticated, people use them more and more to access the internet. There are rumours that operators will be unable to keep up with smartphone users’ growing demand for data on the move, a report warns.

On average, iPhone, Android or Windows Mobile handset owners consumed 35 times more data traffic than a typical phone user. Source the annual Deloitte report. If this was to carry on, mobile Internet use could explode in a few years time.

The bandwidth demand would not mean users failing to connect at all, the report added, but mobile networks would suffer “rush hours” just like roads do. During these times, it might take two or three attempts to connect, there would be three or four times as many dropped calls, web pages may freeze and browsing speeds would be much reduced, the report said.

This is a real problem. I live in a rural spot but its not uncommon to get faster speeds than the nearest city of Exeter or even Plymouth. Even the customer service staff joked with me that everyone should live in the middle of the Moors then.

I don’t think there is a proper solution either. The government is opening up and selling more of the wireless spectrum but eventually this will get used up. And there is a mad rush to sell this spectrum without much consideration to the interference or loss or TV that some people will suffer.

It could be quite ironic that we buy the latest smartphone because it can manage a super high speed connection, except there isn’t one available.