The new system, which supports 2,000 internet protocol (IP) phones, provides automated routing, staff paging and hands free facilities. The trust plans to expand voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services to other facilities.
Rick Juniper, director of ICT at the trust, said: As part of the development we wanted to update the telephony used and try out internet telephony. The aim was to save money and have less cable. The trust believed that this was the right thing to do, and by using a system like this we were able to reduce the number of data points from 6500 to 2840. We had hardware as part of the PFI, so we needed to ensure that the system used would be extra resilient to run both data and telephony.
