Case study
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust
Healthcare team gets smaller
call bills and more flexibility
With the help of IP telephony, Kingston Hospital NHS
Trust wanted to save money and get more done. But
John Osbourn didn’t want to throw away a conventional
PBX that still did a great job.
The N3SP team came up with an idea that simply
spliced new and old together. Now N3 Local Gateway
Services and the Hosted Voice Service send selected
calls across the NHS N3 broadband network at no
charge.
That protects John’s investment in existing assets
and adds up to smaller bills for the Trust and more
flexibility for the healthcare team.
N3 Local Gateway Services required little thought. For a
modest one-off implementation charge this allows us to
route calls to other NHS sites served by N3 – free of call
charges – using technology that allows interconnection
to our existing PBX.”
John Osbourn
Network Services Manager
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust
Case study
Kingston Hospital
NHS Trust
“We are very pleased with N3 HVS. It works well
and we get very good support from the N3SP
service desk if ever we need it. That’s great for
us because we’ve only a small IT team and it’s
one thing less to worry about.”
John Osbourn, Network Services Manager
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust
IP telephony over the N3 network helps budgets to go further and
people to get more done
Challenge
Solution
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust serves Kingston,
Richmond, Roehampton, Putney, and
East Elmbridge from one Surrey campus.
It employs nearly 3,000 people.
The Kingston campus already had a
conventional PBX plus standard exchange
lines to the public network. The N3SP team
recommended Local Gateway Services (LGS)
to route selected calls over the NHS N3
broadband network free of charge. Created
and managed by BT, N3 is Europe’s largest
virtual private network with over 40,000
NHS connections. And all it took was for
BT to add an extra card in the Trust’s PBX
to help it get the most from existing assets
and adopt IP-based communications too.
The Trust has a well-established
communications infrastructure, but is
keen to use new technology to cut costs
and boost efficiency. In 2006 it decided
to switch to IP telephony for any new or
refurbished buildings. The construction
of a new centre for cancer patients – The
Sir William Rous Unit – provided the
opportunity to put that plan into action.
Network Services Manager, John Osbourn,
explains: “We needed to equip the new
unit with voice and data communication
facilities as cost effectively as possible. Being
a green field site it was an ideal opportunity
to implement IP telephony to the desk.
However, it needed to be integrated
with our existing telephone system.”
The Trust turned to N3SP for help1.
1. N3 Service Provider – a unit managed by
BT on behalf of NHS Connecting for Health.
There was another budget-conscious
IP telephony recommendation for The
Sir William Rous Unit: N3 Hosted Voice
Service (HVS). Here call management
happens in the network. So it’s quick and
easy to set up because there’s no hardware
for the Trust to house or maintain on
site. The Unit has thirty‑two IP phones,
connected to standard LAN ports. Staff
can relocate phones themselves simply
by plugging them in at a different point.
That makes hot desking easy too.
John Osbourn says: “We saw N3 HVS as a
natural progression. It’s very flexible and we
can add to it as required. The commercial
terms were very attractive too.”
Value
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust has cut its
communications bills. Calls to other NHS
sites that use N3 Voice Services go over
the N3 network at no additional charge.
And fixed rentals for N3 HVS make costs
easier to predict and budget for. As a
bonus, the Trust saves around 30 per cent
on fixed-to-mobile calls. That’s an important
consideration for the NHS, an organisation
with 60 per cent call traffic of this kind.
“We’re very pleased with N3 HVS,” concludes
John Osbourn. “It works well and we get
very good support from the N3SP service
desk if ever we need it. That’s great for
us because we’ve only a small IT team
and it’s one thing less to worry about.”
Core BT services
¾¾ N3 Hosted Voice Service (HVS)
¾¾ N3 Local Gateway Services (LGS)
Offices worldwide
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and equipment are provided subject to the respective British
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10/09