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What is Teams Phone

  • Article
  • 04/28/2025
  • Applies to: Microsoft Teams

This article is for administrators and IT professionals who are evaluating Microsoft Teams Phone--Microsoft's technology for enabling call control and Private Branch Exchange (PBX) capabilities in the Microsoft 365 cloud.

By default, calls between Teams users in your organization are handled natively within Teams, and never go to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), removing operator toll costs for calls that stay internal to your organization. To see more about Teams calling in general, see Teams calling overview.

To enhance user calling experiences with the ability to make and receive domestic and international telephone calls, Teams Phone provides add-on options to Teams for connecting users with the PSTN.

The add-on options comprising of Teams Phone include the following:

  • User or resource account licensing for the appropriate Teams Phone application

  • At least one PSTN operator solution that allows you to access the PSTN and acquire phone numbers for your tenant.

Note

A PSTN solution is separate from a Teams Phone license. A PSTN solution provides a customer's tenant with phone numbers and PSTN access to domestic, international, and emergency calling. The Teams Phone license entitles a Teams user to enhanced calling capabilities within the tenant and access to the PSTN solution.

Teams Phone allows you to replace your existing PBX system with a set of features delivered from the same platform that provides your enterprise productivity tools.

Teams Phone can be used in all desktop and mobile Teams clients. Teams Phone can also be used on certified, third-party hardware devices. To learn more about desk phones, see Phones for Microsoft Teams.

If you have another phone system or a contact center in your organization, Teams Phone supports coexistent integrations.

Teams Phone works with all Teams clients and with certified, third-party devices, and includes a rich set of features, empowering end users to manage their own phone call workflows.

Teams also provides administrators with a comprehensive set of voice policy settings that can control the features at a global, group, and user level.

Administering Teams Phone builds on the same model for administration as outlined for native Teams calling in Calling in Teams overview, and includes administration of extra calling features that are available to users licensed for Teams Phone.

Teams Phone also includes extra enterprise phone system features for your organization, like auto attendants and call queues.

To learn more about what is included with Teams Phone, see Teams Phone features.

Need help with your Teams Phone deployment?

Are you new to setting up phone systems or just need some extra help?

You have several avenues to get help with your Teams Phone deployment.

  • If you're a customer that is categorized as SMB (Small to Medium Business), we offer a complementary consultation program.

    • To learn more, contact our Teams Phone SMB support team at ContactTeamsPhoneSMB@microsoft.com.
    • SMB is considered fewer than 300 users with business SKU licenses, or a customer with fewer than 500 users with E3, E1, and Phone System licenses.

  • If you're a customer with a larger user base, we offer Microsoft Cloud-Solution-Architect-led workshops for Teams Phone planning, piloting, enabling at scale, optimizing, and more, through Unified Support plans.

  • Regardless of size, we offer Microsoft FastTrack enablement services to all licensed customers.

  • Microsoft also offers a rich ecosystem of Teams Phone partners who can help with your Teams Phone planning, enablement, optimization, management, PSTN access, devices, solutions, services, and more.