Vendors
Microsoft Teams Phone in Australia: calling plans and options
Independent advice on Teams calling for Australian organisations. The difference between Calling Plans, Operator Connect and Direct Routing, where the Teams Queues app runs out, and why the cheapest looking option is often the most expensive one to run.
How Teams calling works
Four things to understand before you turn telephony on in Teams
Teams Phone is the default answer for organisations already paying for Microsoft 365, and the default is right often enough that it deserves proper evaluation rather than assumption.
Fit
Where Teams Phone is the right answer, and where it needs help
Teams Phone is a strong telephony platform and a weak contact centre. Most disappointment comes from expecting one product to be both.
It suits you when
You run Microsoft 365, your requirement is business telephony rather than queued customer contact, and you want one vendor, one client and one support path. For internal and outbound calling across an office-based or hybrid workforce, this is frequently the cheapest total cost available once you count training and administration.
Telephony inside the tenant
Look elsewhere when
You run a contact centre. Skills-based routing, supervisor tools, omnichannel, quality management and workforce management are outside what Teams provides. The usual answer is Teams Phone for the organisation plus a Microsoft certified contact centre for the agents, which is two products and two contracts rather than one.
Where the queue starts
How we help
What a Teams calling project looks like when it is run properly
We are vendor funded, so the service costs your business nothing. Most of the value here is in the connection choice, which is where the money moves.
Model Calling Plans against Operator Connect and Direct Routing
For most Australian organisations of any size, an Australian carrier through Operator Connect or Direct Routing costs less per minute than Microsoft Calling Plans, and the gap widens with volume. We price all three against your actual call records.
Count the licences properly
Teams Phone is an add-on above E3, and E5 includes it. Whether upgrading licences beats buying the add-on depends on what else in E5 you would use, and it is arithmetic worth doing rather than guessing.
Decide whether you need a contact centre at all
If a handful of people share incoming calls, Queues may be enough. If reporting or routing matters, we size a certified contact centre alongside it and compare that combination against a single unified platform.
Choose the carrier on more than rate
Number porting, emergency calling obligations, service levels and support hours matter more than the cent per minute once you are live. We negotiate with the Australian carriers directly.
Plan the port
Number porting is the part of a Teams telephony project that goes wrong. We scope it, sequence it and hold the carrier to the dates.
Due diligence
What to check before you turn on Teams calling
These are the items that decide whether the project stays cheap.
Which connection model, and what it really costs
Calling Plans are the simplest and rarely the cheapest at volume. Get Operator Connect and Direct Routing priced by an Australian carrier against your own minutes before deciding.
Emergency calling and address handling
Australian emergency calling obligations apply, and dynamic location for hybrid workers is the part most often left until after go-live. Establish who is accountable for it.
Where Teams Queues stops working
Ask for the concurrent call and queue limits in writing, and compare them against your busiest hour rather than your average. This is the most common reason a Teams telephony project needs rescuing six months later.
Copilot licensing at scale
Copilot is licensed per user and is the source of the AI capability. If you are comparing against platforms that include transcription and summaries as standard, price Copilot into the comparison or it is not a fair one.
Which contact centre, and how it integrates
Microsoft certifies contact centre partners across Connect, Extend and Unify models, and they behave differently. Establish which model your chosen product uses and what that means for call control and reporting.
Who supports the session border controller
On Direct Routing the border controller is a real piece of infrastructure with patching and failover obligations. Confirm whether you own that or your carrier does.
Common questions
Questions about Teams calling
What Australian organisations ask before enabling Teams Phone
How much does Microsoft Teams Phone cost?
Teams Phone is a per user add-on above Microsoft 365 E3 and is included in E5. Calling capability is separate again: Microsoft Calling Plans, Operator Connect or Direct Routing. For most Australian organisations an Australian carrier through Operator Connect or Direct Routing costs less per minute than Calling Plans, and the difference grows with volume.
What is the difference between Operator Connect and Direct Routing?
Operator Connect brings an Australian carrier in through the Teams admin centre with no hardware and no session border controller to run. Direct Routing connects your own carrier through a border controller you or your partner manage, which gives more control over routing, resilience and least-cost routing at the price of running infrastructure.
Can Microsoft Teams replace our contact centre?
Not above a small team. The Teams Queues app handles light call distribution and stops well short of skills-based routing, supervisor tools, omnichannel, quality management and workforce management. The normal answer is Teams Phone for the organisation and a Microsoft certified contact centre for the agents.
Which contact centres are certified for Teams?
Microsoft certifies partners across three integration models: Connect, which uses certified session border controllers and Direct Routing; Extend, which uses the cloud communication APIs; and Unify, which builds natively on Teams calling infrastructure. Dozens of providers are certified, and the model matters more than the badge because it changes call control and reporting.
Is Teams Phone cheaper than RingCentral or 8×8?
For straightforward business telephony in an organisation already on Microsoft 365, usually yes, particularly once training and administration are counted. Once you add a certified contact centre alongside it, the comparison narrows and a single unified platform sometimes wins. That is the calculation worth running rather than assuming either way.
Do you sell Microsoft licensing?
We advise on it and we negotiate the carriage. We are vendor funded, so the service costs your business nothing, and we hold relationships across more than thirty vendors rather than one.
We are vendor funded and completely free to your business. Always focused on the right outcome.
Price the calling model before you enable it.
The gap between Microsoft Calling Plans and an Australian carrier on Operator Connect is where the money is, and it widens with volume. Book a call and we will price all three against your own call records.
