Whether you’re supporting 30 users or 30,000, you have options when it comes to powering voice and emergency calls in Microsoft Teams. However, these are issues that don’t only affect a Teams environment, they impact your communications technology stack both today and for the future. 

A good plan for SMEs

The good news is that Teams provides you with numerous voice options. These include calling plans which provide you with a phone number, a bundle of minutes and public switched telephony network (PSTN) connectivity via Teams. Calling plan advantages include having one provider for your phone system and calling plan and enablement of self-service deployment via an online portal. Bandwidth sees calling plans as best-suited for small-to-medium-sized enterprises with limited geographic scope.  

The downsides are that calling plans can be more expensive, depending on company size, and can have a cap on domestic and international usage. In addition, because Microsoft is a wholesale of carrier services, it has less control and expertise around network and voice operations than a carrier does. Microsoft works through its voice and emergency calling resellers to resolve issues but this makes it hard to manage users and make changes and it also takes longer to port numbers. 

The direct approach

Another option is direct routing, which allows you to bring your own session border controller (SBC) and carrier or to select a third party carrier, such as Bandwidth. Also known as bring your own carrier (BYOC), direct routing advantages include lower calling costs because you only pay for usage, greater control over migration, number porting and management, and support for vendor consolidation across different unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and contact centre as a service (CCaaS) platforms.   

Bandwidth recommends direct routing for global enterprises with more than 5,000 seats, and with many different vendors and CCaaS/UCaaS platforms. With Bandwidth as your direct routing partner dynamic location routing (DLR) challenges can be solved and customers get direct PSTN access in 38 countries worldwide. The negative aspect is that direct routing is, depending on the carrier, time-consuming to configure and that’s why it’s best suited for organisations with more than 5,000 seats. 

A smooth operator

A final option is operator connect. This is similar to direct routing but offers less flexibility over your carrier and Bandwidth sees it as most suitable for SMEs with straightforward use cases that want to use a new or current carrier. 

With operator routing, companies receive carrier service level agreements (SLAs) but can only use Microsoft-approved carriers. They are provided with a turnkey framework that features a user-friendly front-end and internal IT can assign telephone numbers without using and external provider. A further advantage is that by paying for usage, costs can be lower if a certain scale of calling is reached. 

However, there are several points that mean operator connect is not suitable for all types of SME. It is not as flexible in general as other options and it is not ideal for addressing complex requirements such as call centres, call-forking or control over SBC software levels. In addition, customers are tied into using Microsoft-approved carriers. Finally, operator routing is unable to support larger businesses with more complex requirements.   

Choosing the best solution for your business is complex and multi-layered and it is essential to consider your emergency services communications in Teams, especially in the US where regulations are complicated and time-consuming to navigate. Bandwidth has solutions for every situation and the expertise to guide you through all the complexities.  Learn about Bandwidth’s Direct Routing solution, Duet for Teams.

 



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