The trust was seeking ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs, so when SIP applications began to emerge it was keen to explore the possibilities.
BT provided the trust with 400 SIP trunk channels on its One Cloud Cisco platform, which has substantially reduced the cost of telephony services.
The combination of lower line rental costs and reduced call charges saved the South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust around £250,000 a year.
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health services for a population of around 1.1 million people across a large area of South London and Kent. It:
- has 4,800 employees operating from around 100 sites
- provides community-based services for around 39,000 people
- provides in-patient care for 5,000 people in 68 wards across four main hospitals.
Like many NHS organisations, the trust is constantly looking for opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Always alert to advances in technology, the trust was keen to explore the possibilities when session initiation protocol (SIP) applications began to emerge.
Ricky Mackennon explains: “We had already started to migrate our voice network away from standalone private branch exchanges (PBXs) to a centralised network of four IP PBXs. SIP underpins the next phase of that evolution, allowing us to move away from BT Featurenet hosted voice, rationalise our integrated services digital network (ISDN) services, and fully utilise an integrated numbering plan.”
The solution
The result
As an early adopter of SIP-based voice services, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has substantially reduced the cost of its telephony services, while improving resilience and business efficiency.
“Implementing SIP voice has enabled us to route more calls for free over our IP infrastructure, plus we only need around half the number of trunks to deliver the same availability to extension users,” says Ricky Mackennon.
The combination of lower line rental costs and reduced call charges has saved us around £250,000 per annum.
BT Ethernet Connect services interconnect the four IP PBXs over 100Mbps optical bearers for maximum resilience. In addition, N3 local gateway services enable up to 15 concurrent calls to other N3 voice-connected NHS organisations at reduced call charges.
Business continuity has improved too. BT One Cloud Cisco SIP trunk services remove the reliance on a single local exchange. Each extension can now be served from any one of the four IP PBX nodes, each having access to the full range of SIP trunk circuits. This makes the loss of voice services at any one site highly unlikely.
Meanwhile, a coherent numbering plan has simplified internal communications by reducing the range and complexity of dialled numbers for improved efficiency. The trust also has a platform that will support the future deployment of productivity-enhancing unified communications applications.
Ricky Mackennon sums up: “With the implementation of BT One Cloud Cisco SIP trunks we are well placed to interconnect with other NHS organisations that migrate to SIP. This should deliver even greater cost and efficiency benefits going forward.”
About
- Client details
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health services for 1.1 million people across 100 sites
- Industry
Healthcare
- Location
South London and Kent
Related products and solutions
- One Cloud Cisco
