Microsoft 365 for Operators

Microsoft 365 provides operators the opportunity to access new revenue streams through partner-led services and grow market share for productivity, collaboration, and connectivity. Backed by tools that apply artificial intelligence and machine learning, Microsoft 365 offers a broad and deep set of apps and services that can give your customers flexibility and choice in how they connect, share, and communicate.

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For systems integrators, learn how to leverage Operator Connect

Enhance and streamline the Teams Phone experience

Microsoft's commitment to creating a best-in-class, modern calling experience begins with the deployment of Microsoft Teams Phone. Operator Connect provides you, the operator, with deeper integration into the Teams platform to enhance and streamline the Teams Phone experience around networking, provisioning, management, and reporting APIs. Doing this provides customers a simplified Teams Phone experience delivered by operators that has parity with Microsoft offerings. Through this partnership, Microsoft and operators can develop a deeper and more strategic relationship that takes Teams Phone to the next level by delivering higher-quality calling experiences to customers.

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Provide additional choice for dial-in audio conferencing for operators and customers

Operator Connect Conferencing is an operator-provided managed service, built on the framework provided by Operator Connect and allows customers to add operator dial-in numbers to a Microsoft Audio Conferencing bridge. Customers can leverage their existing contracts and Conferencing agreements (with select operators), to bring dial-in numbers to Microsoft Teams.

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Deliver an intuitive, mobile-first Microsoft Teams experience

Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile delivers cellular network quality of service to Teams communications, while allowing customers to enforce business policies, reduce costs, and improve the user experience for the growing mobile workforce. Through Teams Phone Mobile, Microsoft will collaborate closely with mobile network operators (MNOs), leveraging their unique mobile assets, including 5G technologies, to build a differentiated, high-quality, connected, and immersive mobile experience that can evolve with worldwide mobility trends.

Learn more about Teams Phone Mobile

Operator Connect

Operator Connect provides an enhanced way for you to deliver Direct Routing to enable calling in Microsoft Teams. Operator Connect offers can enhance the Teams Phone experience over standard Direct Routing.

	Operator Connect	Direct Routing
Program type	Programmatic approach to operator-provided calling	Not a program. Core functionality.
Interconnection	Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS) for Voice	TLS/SRTP over Internet or MAPS
Number provisioning	Provisioning through APIs to facilitate automation	“Limited” (through Powershell only)
Teams Admin Center	Operator presence in Teams Admin Center	None
Customer experience	Number visualized in the portal for provisioning and management	IT admin or operator needs to assign number and policies through PowerShell
Data sharing	Call-detail record (CDR) and call quality dashboard (CQD) data provided to operators through APIs	CDR/CQD data can be retrieved tenant by tenant using delegated access
Support/SLA	Operator Tier 1 Support; Operator-Microsoft model in place	Operator Tier 1 Support; Escalations through Microsoft 365 and/or Premier Support
Management	Dedicated management capabilities in operator portal or API	Delegated admin or Teams role-based access control (RBAC) access required from customer
Total cost of ownership	“As a service” model delivered by the operator	SBC owned and operated by the customer or hosted and managed by operator

Operator Connect partner benefits

Operator Connect allows you to scale your Direct Routing service to provide a pure cloud-managed solution to your customers. Through Operator Connect, you can create automations to streamline provisioning, billing, and reporting. In addition, you can uncover go-to-market opportunities for existing and new customers.

Operator Connect customer benefits

Articulate the value of Operator Connect solutions to your customers

Bring your own operator

Customers can maintain their existing operator contracts and relationships, while providing users a modern and streamlined calling experience in Teams.

Simplify setup and management

Reduce provisioning time and management resource needs through a simplified experience in the Teams Admin Center.

Reduce costs

Operator Connect helps customers save on infrastructure and management costs by reducing the need to purchase, maintain, and manage equipment.

Enhanced support and reliability

Technical support and shared SLAs across Microsoft and operators improve support service, while direct peering powered by Azure creates a one-to-one network connection for enhanced reliability.

Operator Connect Conferencing

Operator Connect Conferencing provides an enhanced way for you to enable calling in Microsoft Teams – offering more choice and expanded coverage for customers who need it.

	Operator Connect Conferencing	Microsoft Audio Conferencing
Capabilities	Bring operator service and numbers to dial in to Microsoft Teams meetings	Leverage Microsoft service and numbers for dial-in to Microsoft Teams meetings
Bridging	Microsoft Teams Audio Bridge	Microsoft Teams Audio Bridge
Numbers	Provided by operator	Provided by Microsoft
Included in service	Contract and commercial terms between customer and operator	Unlimited toll dial-in within zone; 60 minutes dial-out; consumption for toll-free and international
Coverage	Varies by operator	Microsoft Audio Conferencing coverage here : Region availability - Audio Conferencing

Operator Connect Conferencing customer benefits

Articulate the value of Operator Connect Conferencing solutions to your customers

Leverage operator dial-in numbers for audio conferencing

Your customers can maintain their preferred operator contracts as they migrate their audio conferencing or start new service to Microsoft Teams.

Variety of operators available at your fingertips

Customers can diversify their PSTN requirements to include additional qualified operators.

Expanded geographic dial-in coverage

Additional dial-in locations available, based on the selected operators, to support customers' geographic needs.

Enhanced support and reliability

The tight partnership with operators provides enhanced technical support and service-level agreements to ensure reliability.

Teams Phone Mobile

Customer benefits

Articulate the value of Teams Phone Mobile solutions to your customers

Create a unified business communications experience

Enables an inclusive workplace for mobile, remote, hybrid, and office workers by providing a reliable communication solution to work securely from either their native dialer or from the Teams app on any device

Reduce costs and eliminate redundancies

Allows customers to eliminate fixed lines for their mobile and remote workers and reduce international, long-distance, and intra-company mobile costs.

Streamline management and governance

Provisions access usage and manages telephony services for all employees from one centralized place – the Office 365 portal. Provides enterprises the ability to enforce business policies, including security, compliance, and data governance protocols, even with wireless-only, 5G users.

Deliver a business-grade mobile communications solution

Allows mobile network operators to build on future innovation of their 5G networks through partnership with Microsoft, empowering digital transformation for enterprise customers with a high-quality and differentiated user experience

User benefits

Teams Phone Mobile allows organizations to elevate users' mobile identities as business-grade unified-communications endpoints and enables productive collaboration using Teams. The unique feature set of Teams Phone Mobile will create additional flexibility for users to work from anywhere by enhancing reliability and reachability, simplifying the calling experience, and unifying business communication centrally through a single app.