Microsoft Teams Phone
Teams Phone turns Microsoft Teams into a full business phone system. Here's what it does, the licensing, and the connectivity options.
Microsoft Teams Phone turns the Teams client into a full business phone system. Once it's licensed and configured, your existing Teams app gains a dialler, voicemail, call queues, auto-attendants, and the ability to make and receive calls on real phone numbers.
What you get
- Direct routing or Calling Plans — choose how calls reach the public phone network (more on that below).
- Phone numbers, assigned per user or shared as resource accounts.
- Auto attendants — interactive voice menus ("press 1 for sales").
- Call queues — incoming calls distributed across a group of agents.
- Voicemail — transcribed and delivered into the Outlook inbox.
- Music on hold, shared line appearance, busy-on-busy and most other features you'd expect of a PBX.
- Compliance recording via partner integrations.
Connectivity options
There are three main ways to connect Teams Phone to the public telephone network:
- Microsoft Calling Plans — Microsoft is your carrier. Simple, but limited geographic coverage.
- Operator Connect — a third-party operator partner delivers phone numbers and PSTN connectivity, managed from the Teams admin center. The easiest hybrid model.
- Direct Routing — you bring your own Session Border Controller (SBC) and SIP trunks. The most flexible option and the right answer if you have specific carrier contracts, contact-centre integrations, or compliance requirements.
Most enterprises mix Operator Connect for general users with Direct Routing for sites that need specialist connectivity.
Licensing
Teams Phone Standard is included with Microsoft 365 E5. On other plans, it's a paid add-on (Teams Phone Standard). Microsoft Calling Plan minutes are billed separately on top of that, per user per month. Devices — desk phones, headsets, and Teams Rooms — are an extra capital cost.
Where it fits
Teams Phone is now mature enough to replace traditional PBX and most legacy call-centre setups for medium and large organisations. The hard parts are usually number porting, emergency-services configuration (E911 / equivalent), and migrating call queues and IVRs from the old system. Plan that work like any phone-system migration: in waves, with clear cutovers and dial-tone parity tested before you switch.