Making calls in Teams – with Telekom behind you

In most companies, Teams has long been the hub of the working day: chat, meetings, files. Only the telephone remains separate – with its own system, its own contract and its own maintenance. A system from a time when being reachable meant being tied to a desk. Teams Phone bridges this gap and turns Teams into the telephone system. The real question is no longer whether to take this step, but with whom.

Calls are routed to wherever staff are working. The direct extension remains the same, and staff can be reached in the office, whilst working from home and whilst on the move – without call forwarding, without a second app, and without a separate contact list. For staff, this means one less app to use. For IT, it means an entire system landscape is no longer required: no telecoms system, no maintenance contract, and no specialist knowledge that leaves the company when the next employee retires.

For teams to make calls to the outside world, they need a network operator. There are three ways to achieve this:

• Microsoft Calling Plans – Phone numbers directly from Microsoft. Quick to set up, but in Germany the range of features and customer support are noticeably limited.
• Operator Connect – Telekom is integrated into Teams as a provider at the click of a button. No additional hardware, no session border controllers, no project work required on the network side.
• Direct routing via a SIP trunk – the most flexible option for established environments with specific requirements regarding routing, fax servers, door entry systems or legacy systems that need to remain in operation for some time to come.

For most businesses, Operator Connect is the practical starting point. Direct Routing comes into its own when a more bespoke solution is required. Both are provided by a single provider, and that is precisely the point.

The crucial part isn’t in the software, but in the network behind it. And this is where the market splits.

Telekom’s network and data centres are located in Germany. Data protection under the GDPR is therefore not a contractual clause that one has to take at face value from an overseas provider, but a question of location with a clear answer. For management, works councils and data protection officers, this is often the deciding factor.

Existing phone numbers are ported – nobody has to print new business cards, and no customer dials a dead number. And instead of two separate points of contact, there is a single contractual partner for network connectivity and Microsoft integration. If a line goes down, there’s no debate about whether the problem lies with the carrier or in the cloud. There’s one number, and behind it someone who’s responsible for both.

Then there is the issue of availability. Telekom operates its infrastructure with geographical redundancy and high availability, offering 99.99 per cent voice availability from the very first concurrent call – not just once a certain number of lines has been reached. Reliability is therefore not a question of company size.

Anyone who compares these four points – a German network, seamless number porting, a single point of contact and genuine high availability – with other options will quickly realise that many of these can be purchased individually elsewhere. Taken together, they are only available from Telekom.

A business with 20 lines saves on the investment in its own system and simply purchases telephony as a service – with a predictable monthly cost and no depreciation expenses. A group with thousands of extensions receives a standardised solution across sites and national borders, centrally managed and clearly billed. The basic principle remains the same; only the requirements for reliability and management increase. This is precisely why the model works on both scales.

And it scales with your needs: if demand increases, more connections are added; if there are seasonal fluctuations, the number is reduced again. Thanks to daily billing, you end up paying only for what you actually use.

Technically, the transition is straightforward. The real challenge lies in changing habits. Anyone who has been picking up the receiver for twenty years won’t automatically start using a headset overnight. A tried-and-tested process in three stages:

1. Announce and run a pilot scheme. Explain early on why the change is being made and what, specifically, will improve. A small pilot group gains experience – and later becomes the organisation’s most credible advocates.
2. Learn in small chunks. Short, practical sessions rather than thick manuals. Most questions can be resolved in five minutes using a real-life example.
3. Roll out in phases. Department by department, with clear points of contact during the first few weeks.

The big advantage is that Teams is already in place. The telephony feature is introduced as a familiar function within a familiar environment – not as a new system that needs to be learnt from scratch. This significantly lowers the barrier to adoption. Provided, of course, that the roll-out is managed as a dedicated project and not just done on the side.

Teams Phone with Telekom combines two things that rarely go hand in hand: the working environment your team already uses, and a voice network that is reliable on the German market. Any other approach involves compromises – whether in terms of data protection, the range of features, or the question of who is responsible in the event of a fault. Those who take the roll-out seriously and get everyone on board will ultimately end up with fewer systems, clear lines of responsibility and a telephony solution that fits the way they actually work. Anything else is yesterday’s way of doing things.