In March 2021, Microsoft introduced Operator Connect for Teams, a feature designed to simplify the integration of telephony services within the Microsoft Teams environment. This mechanism allows organizations to choose their preferred telecom operators directly through the Teams admin center (TAC). By partnering with telecom providers, Operator Connect simplifies the overall IT management experience, offering a streamlined approach to managing calls, numbers, and voice services, all within the familiar Teams interface.
Unlike the popular Direct Routing PSTN connection method, which often requires on-premises or cloud session border controller (SBC) hardware, Operator Connect is an entirely cloud-based solution.
With the ever-growing popularity of Teams and specifically Teams Phone, with 20 million active users, many providers have gone through the Microsoft-certification process to have an Operator Connect “tile” show under voice options in the TAC. As of this writing, there are 101 operators listed across 160 geographical regions, spanning alphabetically from Albania to Zimbabwe (each of which list three operator choices).
The challenge within many regions is first deciding which of the numerous Operator Connect options to choose. For instance, there are 46 operators that service the United States, 41 providing services in Canada, and 34 in the UK. No organization is going to compare and contrast these many options as doing so would be a manual process and take months if not years of time.
Because all Operator Connect providers have undergone a rigorous certification process, are required to have a dedicated peering with Microsoft Team’s PSTN hub in Microsoft Azure (that is, a direct connection between the providers data center and Microsoft’s data center; this improves reliability and consistency), and commit to specific SLAs, the service provided by all options should be similar from an end user perspective.
Price and packaging, whether it is per user or per concurrent channel, vary across the different providers in the different geographies. This will be one variable to help evaluate different providers.
However, often lost in the “big picture” technical details and pricing focus, is the lower tech, but equally important, evaluation of processes for requesting new numbers, porting numbers, and dealing with billing and taxation.
For many customers, these on-going porting and billing processes are key to a smooth Teams PSTN experience.
For small and medium-sized customers, that often rely on systems integrators (SIs) and managed service providers (MSPs) to keep their Teams environment running, the Operator Connect provider selected, or recommended by your SI or MSP, becomes key to ongoing success with Teams as a voice platform.
Providing a great customer experience and new opportunities for SIs, MSPs, and value-added resellers (VARs) is the stated intent behind CallTower’s new rebiller program, which includes the GTx portal, launched in June of this year. I've had briefings with CallTower where I was able to see the GTx Portal in action and ask clarifying questions. Here’s what you need to know.
For customers, GTx is delivered through their existing MSP, SI, VAR relationship. This is intended to simplify contracts, billing, and support for customers. Customers continue to leverage existing relationships even as voice services are added to Teams.
For MSPs, SIs, VARs, resellers, and distributors, CallTower GTx is designed to open new service and revenue opportunities.
GTx provides partners with a simple portal that quickly can provision new numbers or arrange porting of customer numbers. Partners can white label and customize CallTower’s voice services to provide a complete Teams package. This means customers do not need to look for additional providers to add PSTN calling to Teams.
CallTower also commits to addressing the often-complicated sales tax, federal tax, and regulatory compliance issues associated with telecom services, allowing its partners to simply focus on providing a great packaged customer service, and grow their revenues. Customers get a single bill.
According to CallTower, because of its direct relationship with Microsoft, a partner can quickly provision new numbers that appear in the customer’s tenant within minutes. Then the customers, or the partner, can assign these numbers to users or other voice applications directly.
While the proliferation of Operator Connect options initially was a positive, the current overwhelming number of options, and the complexity of managing an on-going voice environment, can easily confuse customers and partners.
It is easy to click on any of the 101 operator tiles within the TAC, however, this simply starts an inquiry process that often devolves into multiple emails and manual forms.
CallTower’s rebiller program promises to allow partners to easily offer and deliver voice services to their existing customers, simplifying the selection process, and avoiding the option overload.
Assuming CallTower can deliver on its stated rebiller program aims, and that real-world deployments function as smoothly as the live demos, GTx will indeed offer new opportunities for both partners and customers.
