How hard is it to design a hotel room?

I belong to a generation of foreign correspondents whose first move, on entering a hotel room, was not to turn down the bed or to check (hopefully) for hot water, but to examine the phone, screwdriver in hand. Could you detach it from its socket? Could you open it up to get at the wiring? Did you have a compatible adaptor, and even if you did, could the line transmit data back to your editor in London?

There were more than a few times when I whisked my long-suffering husband out of an otherwise more than acceptable hotel back on to the rain-drenched road in pursuit of communications. Things were sometimes simpler in the old communist bloc, where a word with the concierge and the guardian of a switch-cupboard might produce a long-distance phone line, where officially there was none.