Direct Routing- what is it, and why do I need it?

As the need for an all-in-one communications tool grows by the day, the Microsoft Teams platform continues to see hyper-growth. Teams added over 95 million users in 2020 and have recently announced that they have reached 115 million active daily users.

Collaborate from home

MS Teams was built to be a collaboration tool- not a fully-fledged telephony product. In order to expand its use, Microsoft is currently partnering with different carriers and aggregators in many countries to gain basic connectivity to the PSTN. This leaves users open to costly calling plans on a network with lots of interconnects- leaving calls open to latency, lag, and jitter- which affects the customer experience.

As the Teams platform has expanded in the last year, many businesses love the collaboration it allows but aren't so thrilled about the restrictive call plans and poor quality. Simply put, for large enterprises or globally distributed companies, the Teams telephony solution just doesn’t cut it. So while there’s no question that MS Teams has made working from home much easier for many people, workers collaborating with external partners and global teams have needed an extra PBX with more extensive dialing plans. Many of these companies also end up having to run a PBX alongside their Teams account which adds more vendors, more cost, and more headaches. As working from home is set to be a more permanent solution, companies need to start thinking about ways to reduce their reliance on on-prem solutions. That’s where Direct Routing comes in.

Direct Routing Overview

Direct Routing is a relatively new term that describes creating a PSTN (public switched telephone network) connection to Microsoft Teams users so that they can make and receive external phone calls on any device using Teams. Through Direct Routing, MS Teams users can leverage their existing SIP connections and numbers on the Teams platform.

With Direct Routing, enterprises can now have carrier-grade telephony integrated into the MS Teams platform. Along with higher quality calling and increased reliability, companies can also gain more control over their call routes, numbers, and SIP Trunks. So it all sounds great-but who would benefit most from a solution like Direct Routing?

Direct Routing is a great solution for large enterprises that use teams to collaborate with both internal and external stakeholders. Enterprises with a large, global workforce will gain the most benefit from integrating teams with a telephony provider. Why? There’s a couple of reasons:

1. First things first- MS Teams Calling Plans don’t have a direct line to the PSTN, and therefore rely on multiple carriers and aggregators to connect calls. This can lead to some less than great call quality over the Teams network.
2. The MS Teams calling plans can be expensive when you’ve got more than a couple of hundred people and are calling destinations outside of the US and Europe. Customers that fit this narrative and decide to implement Direct Routing can see savings of up to 40% when compared with the MS Teams plans.

For smaller companies, the cost savings may not be as extreme as for larger companies but switching could still save you a pretty penny. More importantly, no matter the size of your organization, implementing Direct Routing with Teams will give you higher quality calling when you partner with a true, global carrier.

Direct Routing for MS Teams with Telnyx

So what’s the difference in going with Direct Routing with Telnyx vs. any other SIP provider? As Telnyx is a carrier, MS Teams users that leverage the Telnyx network will have direct connectivity to the PSTN.

This means you’ll gain access to a global, Tier-1 network on your communications platform, resulting in improved voice quality for crystal clear calls every time. This option will also give your business greater control over call routing and phone numbers. In addition, Telnyx offers customers an SBC that can be configured by any user without any extra cost or external assitance- making implementation even easier!

Perhaps most importantly, choosing MS Teams Direct Routing with Telnyx will allow your company to scale faster, all around the globe. At Telnyx we’ve spent lots of time putting Tier 1 interconnects in place with partners all around the world. As an MS Teams user, you can now leverage these existing relationships to expand your global footprint, without compromising your communications.

Want to try it out? MS Teams Direct Routing is now live in the Mission Control Portal. If you’re a new customer you can sign up to the self-service portal.

If you’re an existing customer- head on over to our Developer Center where you’ll find our Direct Routing setup guide for Microsoft Teams.

If you have any questions or need some help setting up our teams are always here to help, contact us anytime.