Product

This week Microsoft announced a new tier in the Microsoft Teams hierarchy. Previously we had Teams Calling Plans (calling through Microsoft) and Direct Routing (choose your own carrier), but soon there will be a third option Operator Connect for Microsoft Teams. However, to describe it as the third option is misleading, because this clearly sits… Continue Reading

We’ve been discussing Microsoft Teams integration over the past few weeks, and it’s time to draw some conclusions. In this article I’ll be providing specific advice for how service providers should respond to business customers who are using Teams. Step 1: Decide how integrated you want to be Echoing the three tiers I discussed in… Continue Reading

Last week I wrote about one approach for service providers who want to respond to the threat of Microsoft Teams – to provide an integration of Teams into existing PBX functionality. That article has prompted quite a few conversations, and through these discussions I’ve realized that we should think about our possible responses in a… Continue Reading

Microsoft recently announced that Teams had 115 million daily active users, up from just 20 million a year ago. Zoom had been growing rapidly before the pandemic hit (see graph below), and has seen a similar dramatic spike since March. As more and more businesses rely on these platforms – not only for video, but… Continue Reading

Ever since Microsoft purchased Metaswitch, we’ve all been wondering whether we’d see closer integration between Microsoft Teams and the Metaswitch Hosted PBX / UCaaS functionality. One the one hand this seemed like an obvious plan, but we also know that Metaswitch was acquired by the Azure division within Microsoft, so this would require some cross-division… Continue Reading

One of the basic principles of telecoms in North America is that local calls are free and you pay per-minute for long-distance calls. This is how things have always been, but frankly it’s time we moved on. Free local calls used to make sense Back in the early days, free local calls probably made sense…. Continue Reading