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Hospitals in the London area are to have their communications systems upgraded to VoIP using an NHS-wide broadband service, it has been announced.

It is hoped that migrating voice calls to the web will reduce the costs for healthcare trusts since contacting other hospitals in the network will be free.

First to receive the service upgrade was the North West London Hospitals trust and the group's ICT director, Rick Juniper, said it "presents a significant opportunity for us to quickly reduce our telephony costs".

He added that "converging our voice and data provides us with a simple and efficient way to manage our communications needs".

So far 21 London healthcare trusts have signed up for the scheme, with a further 26 expressing an interest in becoming part of the internet phone system which will use the recently-installed N3 broadband network.


The benefits of internet telephony are not just available to public services, however, as pioneering broadband phone company Vonage offers unlimited calls to any number in the UK and Ireland from £5.99 a month, while users can also expand this deal to cover as many as 25 countries for as little as £9.99 a month.