The present invention concerns a base station (12) having a DECT communication module (13) for wirelessly communicating with one or more registered portable DECT devices 10). The base station also has a virtual assistant module connecting over an IP communication channel (28) to a virtual assistant providing responses to user instructions, and a telephony module connecting to and accessing a remote resource over a telephony communication channel (27). A device manager (15) identifies and stores communication parameters of the DECT devices, and can implement a user instruction communicated from a DECT device via the DECT communication module and can route virtual assistant responses to a user instruction. A broker module (19) establishes a communication link between the DECT devices and the virtual assistant, and between the DECT devices and the telephony communication channel. The broker module includes a transcoder module (17) operating to trans-code communications over the communication link between the DECT devices and the virtual assistant in the event of a disparity in communication parameters to enable communication of user instructions and responses between the virtual assistant and a DECT device.