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Business voice, fiber, UCaaS, and network services
For an enterprise with hybrid infrastructure, we'd recommend cloud call control, with equipment kept on site only where a named system, contract or outage requirement needs it. Coexistence, media routing and survivability are separate choices, shown with Teams Direct Routing and, as a separate service, Atlantech's hosted lines.
The PSTN is the combined telephone networks of the world's carriers, connected so that a number on one can be dialed from another. No single company owns it. Landline and mobile carriers both belong to it, and a shared numbering system holds it together. It began with copper lines and circuit switches, and parts of it now run on IP.
The PSTN is the public telephone network that connects phone numbers across carriers. A PBX is one organization's own phone system, which gives users extensions and controls how calls are routed. A business normally uses both: the PBX handles calls inside the organization, and a PSTN connection carries calls to and from outside phone numbers.
CPaaS, communications platform as a service, is a cloud service that sells communication capabilities as APIs. Developers use them to put texting, calling, video or email inside software their company already runs. It sells programmable building blocks, billed mostly by usage, and your team assembles them into the product. The alternatives are a finished service or software that already has messaging built in.
CPaaS APIs turn messages, calls and phone numbers into objects your code can create, look up and change. Your application sends authenticated HTTPS requests to create them and hosts URLs where the provider posts status updates and inbound traffic. The provider's ID for each message or call, stored beside your own record, is what links a later event to the order or customer it belongs to.
UCaaS and an on-premises PBX do the same calling job in different places. A PBX is equipment at your site that your team or a contractor maintains. UCaaS runs in the provider's cloud for a per-user monthly fee and adds video, chat and mobile apps. Cost, upkeep, outage exposure and control of data all follow from that difference, and a business can keep its PBX while changing the service that feeds it.
Evaluate a UCaaS provider in three passes: rule out providers that fail a fixed requirement, compare the rest on written price, term and service terms, then test your own call flow on your own equipment before signing.
Analog devices that use a copper phone line as their call path are at risk: alarm dialers, elevator phones, telecare and medical alert base stations, fax machines, dial-up card terminals, entry intercoms and building monitoring modems. A device whose line is retired or moved to VoIP needs a path that carries its signals and has backup power, checked by a test arranged with the device's vendor or monitoring company.
In the United States, HIPAA sets the main requirements. A covered entity using UCaaS has to include it in its Security Rule risk analysis and safeguards, and needs a business associate agreement before using features that store patient information, such as voicemail, recordings and transcripts. HHS's Office for Civil Rights doesn't endorse or certify products.
VoIP is the technology that carries voice over a data network using internet protocols. UCaaS is a hosted service that sells VoIP calling together with meetings, messaging and the apps to use them. Compare the applications you need with the ones you already have, since the labels overlap.
Both connect Teams Phone to the public phone network through a carrier other than Microsoft. Operator Connect uses a carrier in Microsoft's program that has already built the connection. Direct Routing uses a carrier you choose through a session border controller run by you, an integrator or a provider, and allows more custom integration.
An automatic call distributor is the part of a phone system that decides which agent answers each incoming call and holds callers in a queue when nobody is free. It first works out which agents are allowed to take a call, then picks one of them with a method such as longest idle, rotation or highest skill. On cloud platforms such as Genesys Cloud, the same engine distributes chats, emails and texts.
Common UCaaS call quality problems are broken or robotic audio, dropped calls, lag, echo and one-sided silence. Each has more than one plausible cause, in the network or at the desk, so narrow a complaint by who and what is affected before changing anything.
CPaaS puts communication channels, such as calling and texting, behind an API. For voice and SMS, the provider holds the phone numbers and carrier connections. Your application sends an authenticated HTTPS request to send a text or place a call, and the provider hands it to the carrier network. For incoming traffic, providers commonly send a request to a URL you host and follow the instructions your code returns. The main charges are per message or per minute, and US texting from 10-digit numbers needs registration first.
Start with who you want as your carrier. A Calling Plan makes it Microsoft, Operator Connect uses a participating phone company, Teams Phone Mobile puts the number on a SIM, and Direct Routing connects a carrier you choose or existing equipment through a session border controller. One tenant can combine them.
CPaaS can add text messaging (SMS, MMS, RCS and WhatsApp), phone calls, in-app voice and video, chat and email to an application, plus features built on those channels such as call recording, phone menus and verification codes. Each channel suits a different job and has its own requirement before it works, such as carrier registration for US texting or a registered template to start a WhatsApp conversation.
Size a UCaaS connection from the devices in calls and meetings at the same moment, multiplied by the provider's published rate for each use, plus other traffic and a chosen margin, with upload and download worked out separately. Microsoft's Teams figures are one vendor's example: 58 kbps each way for audio, and 2,500 kbps up and 4,000 kbps down per device for meeting video.
Teams Phone is the phone system license and a Calling Plan is carrier service from Microsoft. Anyone in Teams who calls outside numbers needs Teams Phone; a Calling Plan applies only where Microsoft is the carrier.
Registering a VoIP phone for 911 means giving your provider the street address where the phone is used, plus the suite or floor if responders would need it, so the provider can tie that location to the phone. Atlantech Online documents two options: a static address per phone number for a desk phone, and location taken from switches and access points for phones that move inside a building. It also documents a support-ticket route for corrections, and a 933 call that reads the registered address back.
The PSTN connects a call in two layers. Signaling messages pass between switches to find the dialed number and ring it, and a voice path stays open until someone hangs up. On older parts of the network that path is a reserved 64 kbit/s circuit. On newer parts it is IP packets, and gateways convert between the two where a call passes from one kind of network to the other.
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