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Has anyone sucessfully deployed Volt VoIP phones? If so what was necessary to suceed?

If you are refering to Voalte, the short answer is a lot. They depend on Apple Push Notification Service and recommend an MDM solution (AirWatch, internal or cloud-based) to securely manage the device application environment. They use an open-source IP PBX solution that requires remote access for contract support. You are essentially leasing the solution they manage.

DMZ and public address space for all phones and servers, with numerous firewall rules for all components. Also a desktop application for texting the phones which thankfully has limited access requirements, but plan on it being installed on every PC, so best if you can have wildcard FW rules for these. And a dedicated Mac Mini per floor for rebuilds and updates (can do this wirelessly - esp. if the MDM controls the environment).

Its appealing to hospitals who want to reduce noise fatugue, and rides the sizzle of the iPhone platform. Unlike Vocera or Cisco, this does not give you enterprise level authentication, fast-roaming or QoS. They use IOS 4.3x so you still have access to iPhone wifi tools like wifi analyzer. WPA2-PSK on the devices and controllers if you have them. They outsource a wireless engineering group (RFWorks) to perfrom an assessment, and its well done. The RF requirements are not dissimilar to other VoIP phones. Its getting rave reviews, more for texting than for voice (probably a good thing given the platform).

There is a trend in healthcare for messaging to move away from being voice-centric to text-centric. When a patient codes in there room and the family present, the emotion of the situation can lead to family members feeling that their loved one did not get time treatment. Text message logs are a much better audit trail than CDR's (Call Detail Records). I would look at Ascom, they have a similar functionality in a phone with a 5GHz chip, and MIL spec durability. I don't believe Voalte is prime time for the enterprise environment. Everyone, still needs to call someone at some point in time and Voalte is VoIP only. There buy phones that have the cellular turned off. Good luck to you, I'd love to hear how it turns out.

Jon, thanks for the insight, as it turns out the Voalte phones in fact are being used more for texting since the voice just plain does not work well. To me they are way too expensive a device to use for this purpose. But, they began deploying them before I onboarded. Nothing to be done now except make the best of it. So, Ascom is a better choice for voice ? Just the fact that it has a 5Ghz chip almost sells it by default.

Thanks Wireless Jon