Does a Teams Phone license include a phone number?

Teams Phone Standard is a hosted telephone service with PBX capabilities. A PBX is the switchboard a business uses to handle its own calls, and the features Microsoft lists are the ones you'd expect from it: cloud voicemail, call forwarding, call transfer, auto attendants, call queues and caller ID. The Teams Phone license a given user needs depends on the Microsoft subscription they already have.

A phone number isn't on that list, and Microsoft says so in its guide to getting telephone numbers in Teams: "Telephone numbers aren't included with Teams Phone licensing." Numbers come from the service provider that connects your tenant to the public switched telephone network, or PSTN. That is the network landlines and mobiles are on.

So a Teams user who has been licensed and set up for Teams Phone, with no carrier connection behind them, has the phone system's features and nothing for an outside caller to dial. The number arrives with the carrier connection, and Microsoft supports four of those.

A Calling Plan is the license that makes Microsoft your carrier. You can buy it on top of Teams Phone Standard or as part of the Teams Phone with Calling Plan bundle. Either way, Teams Phone and a Calling Plan are two products: the first is the phone system and the second is the carrier service.

The plan gives you the right to request numbers. You must have at least one Calling Plan license assigned in your tenant before you can acquire any from Microsoft. An administrator then orders them in the Teams admin center and assigns each one to a user.

The number of licenses sets how many user numbers you can request. For Domestic and International plans, the allowance is the license count multiplied by 1.1, plus ten. A Pay-As-You-Go license allows one number. Microsoft's own example is a company with 30 users on Domestic or International plans and 20 on Pay-As-You-Go, which can acquire 63 numbers. Numbers you bring from another carrier don't count against that limit.

A license also doesn't promise that the number you want is available. A search can come back empty for the area you asked for. In some countries, Microsoft supplies numbers only through its support team, and lead times vary by country and number type.

On the other three routes, the phone company supplies the numbers, and its charge is separate from your Microsoft licensing. Under Operator Connect, providing and porting telephone numbers is the operator's responsibility. Porting means moving a number you already have from your current carrier to the new one. So you can buy new numbers from the operator or port the ones you have. Once you enable the operator in the Teams admin center, you assign its numbers to your licensed users there.

Atlantech Online shows how this looks from the carrier's side. Its Operator Connect page publishes a flat rate for the carrier service of "as low as $3 per user/month" and lists unlimited calling in the US and number porting as included. The same page says customers can keep their existing phone numbers. The $3 is a starting rate. Atlantech quotes each organization, so a given customer's price can be higher.

Microsoft licensing is a separate matter from that rate. Operator Connect requires a Teams Phone license, and a user who already has that entitlement doesn't need a second one. Microsoft 365 E5, for example, includes the phone system. So what Teams Phone costs for a user with a direct number is the Microsoft licensing plus the carrier's service.

Teams Phone Mobile and Direct Routing follow the same division. With Teams Phone Mobile, the number is the one on a company-provided SIM, and the mobile operator makes it available in your tenant. With Direct Routing, the numbers come from the carrier connected through a session border controller, the device that sits between a carrier's network and Teams. Choosing among the four routes depends on which carriers serve your users, whether a number has to be on a SIM and what equipment you already have.

You don't have to give every licensed user a number. Shared Calling is a Teams Phone feature built for people who rarely call outside the company. A group of users makes and receives outside calls through one number, which belongs to a resource account attached to an auto attendant.

The people they call see the auto attendant's number as the caller ID. Anyone who calls that number reaches the auto attendant, which routes the call to the right person. Each of those users still needs a Teams Phone license, and the setup steps tell you not to assign them a number.

Suppose an office has 40 people and a carrier connection set up for Shared Calling. Eight of them are in sales and need a direct line, and the other 32 make an outside call a few times a week. The eight get direct numbers, and the 32 share the main number on the auto attendant. All 40 are licensed for Teams Phone, so the count of licenses and the count of direct numbers come apart. The Shared Calling policy also names the numbers used as emergency callback numbers, so those count toward the numbers the office needs.

A Teams tenant can hold numbers that no person owns. Microsoft sorts numbers by use: user numbers for people, voice app numbers for auto attendants and call queues, and conference numbers for meetings. A main line answered by an auto attendant or a call queue uses a voice app number on that resource account. Teams Phone Mobile supports user numbers only, so a main line of that kind has to come through one of the other routes.

The dial-in number printed on a Teams meeting invitation is a conference number. It comes with Audio Conferencing, a separate add-on that doesn't require a Teams Phone license. Seeing that number on an invitation says nothing about whether you have a phone number of your own. A user has one when an administrator has assigned a number to their account, and you can see that in the Teams admin center.