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Pangea helps NHS effort with Instanet deployment

Pangea are proud to have helped the NHS by connecting a pop-up hospital built for COVID-19 patients with their Multi-network SIMs and Instanet solution.

To deal with the rising number of people requiring treatment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NHS needed more healthcare facilities—and fast. One of these facilities was a rugby stadium that they set out to turn into a pop-up hospital.

Pangea were chosen to provide the site with the mobile connectivity that hospital staff needed to run their vital operations. But with patients due to arrive in two days, they were left with a tiny window of time to set up connectivity at the site.

Time was of the essence

There was no time to get broadband into the stadium—especially considering its awkward location and tricky infrastructure.

The hospital needed an instant connectivity solution that could be up-and-running at a moment’s notice, without sacrificing the Wi-Fi’s quality or resilience.

On top of that, the NHS wasn’t sure how long they would need the facilities—that would depend on the duration of the outbreak, and could range from a few weeks to the rest of the year. So a flexible connectivity contract was key.

Lastly, the solution couldn’t sacrifice quality or resilience for the sake of speed. With this being a hospital, it was absolutely critical that the connectivity stayed strong throughout.

Instanet—flexibility, resilience, and speed, all in one.

Pangea’s Instanet solution was the perfect combination of rapid deployment, flexibility, and resilience that they needed. With such a short timeframe, they needed to go above and beyond to meet the hospital’s deadlines. So on the same day as requested, a Friday evening, the Pangea team got a batch of Multi-net SIMs over to the hospital site, and had them ready for testing and deployment the following day.

The hospital’s router of choice was powerful and fully managed, but required a hefty amount of hardware configuration to get going. So Pangea’s Ops team pooled resources with their site managers, and worked to the wire to get it all set up and ready by Saturday.

When Sunday rolled around, and the hospital began accepting patients, they were equipped with the Multi-network connectivity they needed to carry out their administration tasks, run their telehealth services, and access the data that was crucial to their efforts against the virus—all while staying safe from network outages and staying connected to the best network option in their location.

‘I think we can all agree that our NHS are no less than heroes. It was a real privilege to do our part in keeping them connected,’ said Pangea’s MD Dan Cunliffe. ‘The COVID-19 pandemic left many urgently needing support, and we helped where we could with intelligent, Multi-network connectivity that kept businesses trading and key workers operating.’