This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: New blog articles in Microsoft Community Hub.
Today, as part of Ignite, Microsoft announced that Teams Phone Mobile is now available for Rogers Business customers in Canada and Telia customers in Sweden. This is an exciting announcement for Teams, our communication service provider partners, and for Azure for Operators (AfO), whose products and services have played a significant role bringing these offerings to market, offerings that represent a uniquely deep integration of the market’s largest Cloud UCaaS platform and operator IMS networks.
Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile is a simple and seamless way to integrate end-users’ mobile identities with the Microsoft Teams productivity suite. Teams Phone Mobile enables Microsoft Teams Phone users to access the same productivity and communication tools on their mobile device as they can on other devices, while still meeting business security and compliance policy requirements.
This announcement represents the culmination of a close partnership between AfO and Teams, leveraging the AfO portfolio to enable operator mobile networks to integrate with Teams Phone Mobile.
Unlike fixed networks, which have a long-established standard mechanism for integrating with UCaaS platforms, mobile networks are fundamentally different. They are standardized for 3GPP compliance right from the handset to the mobile core and have a different set of requirements for integration with a Cloud UCaaS platform such as service interactions, SIP interworking and regulatory services.
To address these requirements, AfO delivers products for the operator’s mobile core as well as the network edge. The portfolio is designed to help operators quickly and efficiently deploy Operator Connect and Teams Phone Mobile solutions, providing a smooth and rapid onboarding experience, quick time to market and with minimal network disruption:
Mobile Control point (MCP) is an application server deployed in the operator’s IMS core that acts as an intelligent routing engine deciding which calls get routed into Microsoft Phone System and was deployed by Rogers Communications, the first operator partner to offer Teams Phone Mobile. "By introducing Azure for Operator’s Mobile Control Point, we were able to accelerate the integration of our mobile network with Microsoft Teams,” says Kevin Moniz, Vice President, Unified Communications at Rogers Communications. “AfO’s technology and expertise helped us to seamlessly introduce new Teams mobile native capabilities to our customers with minimal impact to our network."
Managed Service for Teams Calling delivers a managed, carrier-grade Perimeta SBC, that provides the SIP interconnect and addresses interworking between 3GPP-based mobile networks and Microsoft Phone System. Telia extended their use of Azure for Operators’ Perimeta SBC to provide the required advanced interworking functions. "Using Perimeta for interworking, we are able to accelerate the integration of our mobile network with Microsoft Teams,” says Per Broo, Head of Product Area Communications at Telia Company. “Our longstanding relationship with Azure for Operators, makes it simple to use our Perimeta SBC to introduce new Teams mobile capabilities to our subscribers, allowing them to experience Teams natively from their Telia mobile device."
Benefits of using Teams Phone Mobile include:
- Making and receiving calls from a smartphone’s native dialer or Teams endpoints using a single business mobile number.
- Moving calls between devices and Teams endpoints without interruption.
- Transferring calls to colleagues on Teams from the native dialer
- Updating Teams Status to “In a call” when on a call on the native dialer.
- Showing a mobile number or company’s main number as outbound caller ID when making outbound calls from the native dialer or any Teams endpoint.
- Adding a mobile number to company call queues and PBXs.
- Using the reliable cellular voice network in digital “not spots”
- Unifying voicemail & business unanswered settings on all Teams endpoints and email with business enforced archival periods.
- Ensuring that enterprise grade calling policies and compliance are implemented on employees’ mobile calls on Teams and native dialer.
