Major UK telecoms companies have agreed a new set of commitments to support the NHS, following discussions with the Government.

They have recognised that with many healthcare services (e.g. hospital outpatient appointments) now being provided remotely the NHS is more reliant on broadband and mobile services than before.

Specifically, the companies involved are: BT/EE, Openreach, Sky, talktalk, Virgin Media, O2, Three, Vodafone, Cityfibre, Gigaclear, Tesco Mobile, giffgaff, Hyperoptic and KCOM.

Video conferencing

They promise to ensure, for example, that NHS clinicians working from home have, wherever possible, prioritised broadband upgrades to superfast or other improvements they might need. This will be in in order to perform tasks, such as consultations carried out via video conferencing and to download/upload large medical files.

They will also offer identified NHS frontline staff, who are existing customers, the mobile data access, voice calls and text they need, at no extra cost, on their personal mobiles used for work purposes.

For care homes, they are also promising to improve connectivity where it is currently slow or non-existent.

“Covid-19 has made stark the importance of technology in helping people and those who care for them stay connected,” said NHSX Chief Executive Matthew Gould. “Technology has the potential to be a tremendous force for good in helping the country and its citizens through the crisis, and we are grateful to industry colleagues for offering their support to the NHS.”

NHSX is a newly created body that is intended to speed up the digital transformation of the NHS. It brings together teams from the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement together into one unit.

Working from home

Previously, the UK’s major Internet and mobile providers all committed remove all data allowance caps on all current fixed broadband services.

They also committed to working with customers who find it difficult to pay their bill as a result of Covid-19 to ensure that they are treated fairly and appropriately supported.