Tom Boyle from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust shared his experience testing resilient frontline devices and highlighted the practical benefits they could bring across hospital environments.

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Tom explained that recent years have seen a rise in service outages affecting voice and data connections, from network provider issues to infrastructure challenges. While traditional PBX systems have generally remained reliable, the trust was keen to explore solutions that could maintain communication even during connectivity failures.

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“Our colleagues in emergency planning wanted to understand what happens if our core systems aren’t available,” Tom explained. “We’ve also had a growing need for standalone voice services in areas where traditional telephony isn’t easily installed, such as medical records libraries or sites undergoing building work.”

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The pilot devices, provided by Spectralink, offered a flexible solution. They could connect to existing PBXs or cloud platforms like Microsoft Teams while also operating independently if the primary network was unavailable. This capability proved especially valuable for areas that lack full cabling infrastructure or need rapid deployment of communication tools.

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Tom shared that initial testing was straightforward: devices arrived ready to deploy, took less than ten

minutes to set up, and were immediately operational, the early results were promising in terms of

voice quality, reliability, and coverage.