This post highlights a new licensing option regarding (PSTN) telephony / calling / dial tone with Microsoft Teams for small and medium businesses (SMBs) or companies with up 300 seats. Now SMBs can benefit also from Microsoft Teams’ integrated telephony capabilities.

The hereinafter described licensing might be subject to change. Moreover not all licenses or subscriptions are available in every country around the globe, especially calling plans and audio conferencing.

Microsoft extended its phone system offering to be a add-on license for Office 365 business premium, too. Until now you needed the following licenses for telephony in Microsoft Teams:

previously

• Office 365 E1/E3 + phone system (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
• Office 365 E5 (incl. phone system) (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)

now [March 2020]

• Office 365 Business Essentials / Premium + phone system (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
• Office 365 E1/E3 + phone system (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)
• E5 (incl. phone system) (+ calling plan) (+ optional audio conferencing)

Conclusion, opinion and summary

The new licensing option for Microsoft 365 Phone System enables small and medium business (up to 300 seats) with Office 365 Business Premium licenses to consider to use Microsoft 365 Phone System instead of using a PBX or migrate to it to reduce costs, get telephony integrated to Teams and provide a seamless and unified user experience by using Microsoft Teams for communication and collaboration as the hub for teamwork and telephony as well.

Additional resources

• Microsoft Teams add-on licensing [updated section/s – see section “License options based on your plan”]
• Microsoft 365 Business Voice service description
• Use the Getting Started wizard to set up Business Voice
• Microsoft telephony solutions [general overview]
• Office 365 Business Premium [seems not yet to be up to date]
• Microsoft Teams Licensing Notes [Update July 2019]