HOSPITAL patients will be able to watch the World Cup from the comfort of their beds when private televisions are installed in time for the soccer frenzy.

The Royal Bolton Hospital will go live with its scheme to make telephones and bedside screens available to all patients this month.

New mums from the Princess Anne Maternity Unit will be the first to benefit as private company, Patientline, switches on its new technology.

All hospitals across the country have been ordered by the Government to install bedside televisions and telephones by 2004.

A department of health spokesman said: "In an age of cable and digital TV, with over half the population owning mobile phones, people increasingly expect to have access to these services wherever they are.

"It is no longer acceptable for patients to have to wait for a nurse to wheel a trolley to their bed or have to stand in a draughty corridor if they want to make a call."

The Royal Bolton is ahead of schedule, but concerns about the scheme have been voiced by Bolton's health watchdog, the Community Health Council.

They fear that not all patients will be able to afford the £3.50 a day television charge.

Jenny Crabb, from the CHC, said: "There are obvious benefits to many patients, but we are not entirely convinced that it will be fair to all patients."

The cost of the installation is being met by Patientline, one of three commercial organisations fully licensed by the Government to carry out this work.

A hospital spokesman said: "There are many benefits for patients in this arrangement and at hospitals where the system has already been introduced it has had a very favourable response.

"The maximum you can pay for the television is £3.50 a day after which the rest of your day's viewing is free.

"Television stations available include film channels and Sky. Ordinary televisions will still be available free of charge in day rooms on wards and there will be no charge on children's wards."

One anonymous patient expressed concern at the high rates charged to callers making incoming telephone calls to patients at their bedsides.

The CHC believes this could be as high as 50 pence a minute.

The hospital has admitted that individual patients are charged at premium rate but callers are advised of this by recorded message. But the NHS argue that the cost of outgoing calls is actually less than that for BT payphones.

Visitors are being urged by the hospital to buy TV and telephone tokens from various points in the Minerva Road hospital as "a welcome gift" for patients -- replacing the accustomed bunch of grapes.