Truly Working from Anywhere with Teams Phone Mobile

Robert Skyrme, BT/EE Technical Pre-Sales Consultant and Tom Arbuthnot explore everything Teams Phone Mobile, including its benefits and real-world use cases for field workers, sales teams and engineering teams.

• Teams Phone Mobile is an integration of the mobile identity with Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need for separate telephone numbers and voicemails
• It allows users to make and receive calls from Teams on various devices, seamlessly migrating calls between the native mobile dialer and Teams
• The integration is done at the network level, allowing users to take advantage of Teams features for every call, including compliance recording.
• The service is currently available through select mobile operators
• Use cases for Teams Phone Mobile include field workers, sales teams, engineering teams, and those focused on compliance or CRM integration

Thanks to Landis, this episode's sponsor for helping to make content like this possible!

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:15
Tom
Welcome back to the Teams Inside a podcast. This week we've got Rob scam from BT. Rob is pre-sales on mobile at BT EE and we go deep into Teams via mobile. How it works and what the use cases are and what Rob's seeing in the field. Many thanks to Rob for joining and also many thanks to Landis for being the supporter of this podcast.

00:00:27:17 - 00:00:54:21
Tom
Really appreciate their support of empowering Cloud. On with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Pod exciting one this week. It's a topic that I think is really important for the industry, but there hasn't been as much talk about it as I thought there might have been by now. And that is Teams Phone Mobile. I've talked about this before in the monthly updates, but now we're going to get some real deep dive detail from someone who's actually running and deploying and offering the service.

00:00:54:23 - 00:00:58:08
Tom
Robert, do you want to just introduce yourself and give us a little bit of background, please?

00:00:58:10 - 00:01:10:19
Robert
Thanks, Tom. Yeah. Hi. I'm Rob Skyrme I'm part of the technical pre-sales team for mobile solutions at BT EE. and yeah, I've been pretty close to Teams for mobile since we launched last year.

00:01:10:21 - 00:01:26:17
Tom
Awesome. I appreciate you jumping on the part. I talk to lots of the operators about this kind of, on side chats, but it's great to have some on the pod to kind of talk about what it is and where it fits. you've actually been involved in the Teams Phone Mobile journey with BT, kind of more or less right from the start, is that right?

00:01:26:19 - 00:01:43:02
Robert
Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I was sort of drafted in to help work out how we can demonstrate this to customers and bring it to life a little bit, which, always really helps those, those sort of conversations and really just helps people understand what it is and, and what it's going to do for them.

00:01:43:04 - 00:01:56:08
Tom
So why don't we start there? I'm sure a lot of people listening might have heard of it, but kind of from the top. What is Teams Phone Mobile and and and it's not the app. Right. That's the first thing that everybody this name is a challenge. I feel.

00:01:56:10 - 00:02:23:10
Robert
That's right. Yeah. I think often there is a sort of a perception that, you know, we have the application, it rings when somebody calls me on Teams. why do I need Teams Phone Mobile? and the truth is that it's much more than just the application. It's actually, at its heart, it's an integration of your mobile identity with Teams.

00:02:23:12 - 00:02:40:00
Robert
So no longer, your Teams and mobile identities separated. So traditionally, you know, you've got a single mobile device. but you might have two telephone numbers, so one for mobile and one for Teams. You might have. Yeah. Yeah. Voicemail.

00:02:40:04 - 00:02:58:06
Tom
What what do we call that? I'm struggling as an industry, I think. Like what? Fixed line. SIP line, landline. It feels like we haven't got a common name for the because it's I mean that they're also, ethereal now as and they follow you everywhere but your, your landline quote unquote. And your mobile. So in the UK your oh seven kind of number.

00:02:58:06 - 00:03:19:20
Robert
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know and it's going to change the terminology is going to change depending on who you're speaking to. But and I think this is again a great example of why Teams Phone Mobile. Adds value. Because it it becomes an identity then the number is your identity. yeah. So it doesn't matter what that sort of platform is that sits behind it.

00:03:20:01 - 00:03:21:23
Robert
That's you.

00:03:22:01 - 00:03:47:03
Tom
So so what we're doing here is we're taking the the mobile slash cell number and we're surfacing that in Teams Softphone. So you're genuinely single number. So you're making and receiving calls from Teams on your desktop or laptop or app, potentially. But that is the single number. And in this case if BT is you're service provider you're given an O

00:03:47:03 - 00:03:56:18
Tom
Seven number. And if you make and receive calls on your mobile, with native dialer, that's your oh seven number. And if you're making receive calls natively on Teams, that's your 07 number as well.

00:03:56:20 - 00:04:18:06
Robert
That's right. And then any Teams endpoint that you're logged into becomes part of that, that identity. So you're presenting that number. we can come on to number presentation perhaps a little bit later. But yeah. Is how you're presenting that number and that is the number that people are reaching. So they don't have to guess which is the best number to call you on.

00:04:18:07 - 00:04:23:22
Robert
you know, if you're calling out even from your car, for example, you're presenting that identity, that number.

00:04:24:00 - 00:04:42:14
Tom
Awesome. And how's this work? From a kind of integration architecture point of view because we've had fixed mobile conversions, quote unquote, for maybe a decade now in various kind of various like kind of either service provider types or gateways and forwarding and SIM. But this is a bit different, isn't it?

00:04:42:16 - 00:05:12:10
Robert
That's right. Yeah. It's a genuine integration, a network level. so calls are, handled by the mobile network, but passed into the, the Teams environment that Teams phone system, environment. and, and then passed back out and the, the reason that's important I guess there's a few benefits to that, but one is that it allows you to take advantage of all those team features for every single call.

00:05:12:10 - 00:05:21:16
Robert
It's not just saying this is a mobile call. So you go back out to the mobile network. It's actually able to apply that. That's all Teams wrap around it at the same time.

00:05:21:17 - 00:05:41:08
Tom
I think that's a key point you touched now is how deep the integration is. So you're getting on her Gothic presence. So if you use your mobile native dialer, Teams is going to know you're on a call. If you're doing voicemail or you're doing some kind of number management or call management in Teams, you're going to inherit all of those benefits as well.

00:05:41:10 - 00:05:44:12
Robert
yeah. As well as compliance, for example. So,

00:05:44:14 - 00:06:03:06
Tom
Compliance is huge, isn't it? Because if you have compliance recording on Teams, you inherit that on Teams Phone Mobile. So even if you're complete, native dialer to native I when we say native dialer label, I guess we should define that. So you're putting up, you know, your classic dialer outside of an app. You make a mobile call to another mobile person to you.

00:06:03:07 - 00:06:12:18
Tom
Nothing to do with Teams. But actually that's going to go through Teams, get recorded, the call records for compliance reasons. if you've got compliance recording, of course.

00:06:12:20 - 00:06:33:19
Robert
That's right. And I think the real key point here and it's again, another sort of key feature of Teams. So mobile is that actually during that call you can migrate that call from the native dialer over to Teams and back again. And in doing so that compliance based reporting can actually follow that call through each leg of that journey.

00:06:33:19 - 00:06:57:16
Robert
So you're not, getting a piece of the puzzle, or having to sort of rebuild that puzzle back together after the fact. again, that's a really strong point. And, and the key feature of Teams for mobile really, is, is the ability to. So, you know, you and I might be on a mobile call together we decide that we want to sort of discuss, the upcoming podcast.

00:06:57:16 - 00:07:10:04
Robert
And you want to show me what the agenda looks like or something like that. We can actually just uplift that call without breaking the continuity to share that content, see some video. yeah. It's pretty.

00:07:10:04 - 00:07:21:09
Tom
And in that scenario, we both have to be Teams phone mobile users. Right? Because we, we're escalating from mobile to VoIP slash IP. I guess.

00:07:21:11 - 00:07:23:09
Robert
That's right. Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:23:11 - 00:07:39:20
Tom
So so really powerful, I guess where people are rolling out at some kind of scale inside their organization. It's like we all kind of know we have mobiles and their Teams that we all know. If we're talking to each other, we can escalate ad hoc or I pick it up on the desktop, you pick it up on the mobile, you get to your desk.

00:07:39:20 - 00:07:42:15
Tom
We can seamlessly bring it to Teams.

00:07:42:17 - 00:08:26:05
Robert
Yeah. And it's about that, taking advantage of something that's been a barrier before. And that is the fact that is mobile work is the people, you know, tens of thousands of people across organizations that throughout their day have to move between different devices, different environments, different types of connectivity. And that's previously been a barrier. You know, but actually now it's kind of inconsequential because doesn't matter what device you're on, it doesn't matter whether you're on the mobile network or Wi-Fi, where you are, you can just move that call around to the scenario that suits you best.

00:08:26:05 - 00:08:42:07
Robert
So obviously, I'm sat on my desk right now. If a call came through on my mobile with Teams Phone Mobile, I answer it on the laptop because I'm sat here and I've got my headset. Yeah. if I'm out and about though clearly the mobile is the best choice for that call. But it gives me that flexibility.

00:08:42:09 - 00:08:58:21
Tom
That's awesome. And this is only available from limited mobile operators at the moment. So the mobile operator has to be working Microsoft. They have to have integrated like an IT core level. It's not a it's not a feature of Teams. It's a combination of Teams plus the operator.

00:08:58:23 - 00:09:21:09
Robert
Yeah. That's right. And you know, I guess you could say rather unselfishly, we're really keen to see more and more carriers onboarded, to just increase the, the global availability of Teams for mobile. We were, I was lucky enough to be at Mobile World Congress with Microsoft this year. And clearly, you know, there's an audience from around the world.

00:09:21:09 - 00:09:36:21
Robert
And the interest was, significant. but availability is less significant at the moment. So. So, yeah, we'd love to see more more people come on board and, you know, recently there's been some, some great announcements about new carriers. yeah.

00:09:36:22 - 00:09:52:05
Tom
It feels like it's getting just work. And I if we've got other carriers coming in the UK, we've got other carriers from other. And I think, as you rightly say, as more operators have it, it becomes more of a conversation piece and, and likely adoption will go. Yeah. For everybody.

00:09:52:07 - 00:10:06:17
Robert
Yeah, absolutely. And you know you mentioned the UK there. You know, we're absolutely welcoming our colleagues from other UK carriers to, to also spread the message because it's, Teams Phone Mobile is going to take off big time.

00:10:06:19 - 00:10:19:03
Tom
That's awesome. And what does that what does that look like as a customer. Because it's it's business not consumer. Right. And I can't bring my own phone to this service. It has to be business contract. What does that look like.

00:10:19:05 - 00:10:35:10
Robert
How you can bring your own phone. Absolutely. but you can't bring your own sim. so for example, if you were an organization with a BYoD strategy, you would be paying for that business sim effectively. Okay.

00:10:35:10 - 00:10:42:07
Tom
Yeah. Great. Can't say sorry. Yeah, right. SIM is a different sort of phone. If you wanted to manage resources outbound. That's a good point.

00:10:42:09 - 00:11:08:23
Robert
Yeah. But, and again that provides enormous flexibility. So especially with, with eSIM being what it is these days, our ability to remotely push eSims out to devices, you know, we could potentially onboard BYoD users with a secondary Teams Phone Mobile line, very quickly and easily. So again, some some real agility there in terms of how we can deploy and who we can deploy to that.

00:11:08:23 - 00:11:13:09
Tom
So it's eSIM and physical SIM essentially there's no difference there.

00:11:13:11 - 00:11:23:10
Robert
No difference whatsoever. I would say in all honesty, I think we will be seeing a significant shift to eSIM. it's already kind of.

00:11:23:13 - 00:11:33:15
Tom
Yeah, feels like the industry's going that way, isn't it? And some of the phone manufacturers are prefer I think, you know, Apple leading the force charge there. We're just going to go eSIM at some point.

00:11:33:17 - 00:12:00:05
Robert
Very much so. And you know, a lot of the conversations that we're having now eSIM centric, you know, it's key to, for example, migrations. It just makes life an awful lot easier. And if we think about, a kind of an onboarding scenario. So let's say this is a, a corporate owned device. Now, you know, we're at a point where we can just post that device straight out to an end user.

00:12:00:07 - 00:12:21:05
Robert
They can unbox that device, they simply enter the work credentials, and then suddenly the network pulls down that eSIM. We also the activate Teams for mobile on that. The MDM then pulls down all the policies and apps that they need. And you know that user is fully up and running in minutes without actually any involvement from IT. It's quite compelling stuff.

00:12:21:07 - 00:12:37:15
Tom
Awesome. I'm going to put you on the spot on, on how it works kind of contracting commercials of the only share what you can share. But like, is this one seat, tens of thousands of seats. How does it how does it work? What kind of contracts and models does it fall into?

00:12:37:17 - 00:13:05:12
Robert
well, we're incredibly flexible. If you would like, two users or 20,000 users, but will will accommodate that, or you'll see the commercials may, change slightly to say, as I said, the scale of the, the, the deployment. but yeah. So from our side, we basically have what we would call an enabler. We're cautious not to call it a license because there is a whole licensing side on Microsoft that that customers do.

00:13:05:18 - 00:13:07:06
Robert
Obviously need to be aware. Yeah, we should.

00:13:07:11 - 00:13:20:21
Tom
Switch on that really briefly for the community. So on the Microsoft side, you'll need the Teams phone license. strangely, you need to add a zero cost license to activate, but it is a zero. No, you don't anymore. Oh, if they got rid of that.

00:13:20:21 - 00:13:28:04
Robert
Oh, I well yeah. So certainly if it's not already done it will be in the next couple of weeks.

00:13:28:06 - 00:13:28:17
Tom
oh. There you go.

00:13:28:17 - 00:13:43:12
Robert
Breaking news legacy. That ain't no worries. But yeah that legacy SKU which existed for, I guess, Microsoft reasons it managed to incorporate into the phone system license. So it just simplifies things from, from that side.

00:13:43:13 - 00:13:56:08
Tom
So if you were an enterprise and you've got E5 for example, that includes Teams phone on the Microsoft side of the fence, there's no additional cost there. Sorry I jumped into you guys. So you talk about the BT side.

00:13:56:10 - 00:14:22:13
Robert
Yeah. No, that's absolutely fine. But you're absolutely right. so as long as the customers phone system, in whichever format that takes, from a licensing perspective from Microsoft on our side, we simply apply what we call the Teams Phone Mobile enabler, that does carry a per month cost. but that allows you to then or what that does is it publishes the mobile number into your Teams admin center.

00:14:22:15 - 00:14:26:17
Robert
Yeah. you can then allocate that number to a user and off you go.

00:14:26:17 - 00:14:28:07
Tom
So and that.

00:14:28:09 - 00:14:30:03
Robert
Is so easy to.

00:14:30:05 - 00:14:39:22
Tom
Yeah I've done the provision in the Excel. It's a really a couple of clicks. It's quite an impressive experience. Even more so if you're using eSIM and you're kind of doing that drop ship model. It's it's really cool.

00:14:39:22 - 00:15:02:00
Robert
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And and I think, you know, we do need to touch on what I would call more traditional Teams voice services. And sometimes those deployments can be a lot more complex. Yeah. so I think for anybody that might be carrying a few battle scars from some something like that, this will be, a breath of fresh air.

00:15:02:02 - 00:15:02:11
Robert
yeah.

00:15:02:11 - 00:15:28:23
Tom
Very much like operator Connect. If you've done that. It's like a remote provision. It's all cloud. The cloud. There's no SBC's IP addresses. There's no, like, kind of, you know, classic. IT fun. There's obviously the commercials and contract tools to get through. But from a technical point of view, very, very easy. and then what happens? So I'm a Teams phone mobile user with BT, my inbound and outbound, you know, Teams calls, fixed line whatever you want to call it.

00:15:28:23 - 00:15:37:03
Tom
Like like soft phone. Those are minutes in and out of BT now. So they're part of my mobile minutes either provision or cost. Is that correct.

00:15:37:05 - 00:15:47:02
Robert
Yeah that's right. Yeah, absolutely. although that said obviously those Teams to Teams calls still exist. within the organization.

00:15:47:02 - 00:15:48:21
Tom
Yes stay on net quote unquote

00:15:48:23 - 00:16:14:00
Robert
Yeah, absolutely. And if you're on Wi-Fi, for example then you not consuming mobile minutes. But I think you know where historically mobile was seen as, a very expensive way of communicating with, with the outside world is less so these days. I think, you know, the cost of mobile calling mobile minutes is so much more competitive.

00:16:14:02 - 00:16:34:12
Tom
Yeah, yeah. And again, depending on what contract you've agreed, you might have bundles or options that like different different from different carriers. But also I mean I look at the stats for some of the enterprises I work with. Like honestly, realistically, you know, the use of fixed line is down and mobile remains pretty consistent. So people are reaching for their mobile anyway.

00:16:34:12 - 00:16:39:10
Tom
So you're probably not up. spend that. Realistically, I think.

00:16:39:12 - 00:17:07:11
Robert
No. And I you know, I think it's quite early to see a bigger picture here. I personally think it's going to be very subjective in terms of whether or not you'll realize any cost savings from from this, but I think or rather some, you know, obvious cost savings in terms of those, those bills. But what you will realize is more productivity and more availability of your people.

00:17:07:11 - 00:17:12:00
Robert
So I think those those cost savings may realize in other ways.

00:17:12:02 - 00:17:39:10
Tom
Yeah, obviously. So there's a, there's an, potentially additive cost on the side, but you're losing some cost in, buying a classic SIP channel or SIP Trunk or so that might be a wash or there or thereabouts. But like you say, you the, the productivity benefit of the user now being able to work from anywhere, go anywhere, drop into an area where there's, you know, low, low data and still have a cellular call and have a single experience jump in and out of the office.

00:17:39:10 - 00:17:43:11
Tom
All those things we talked about, nice benefits, I think.

00:17:43:13 - 00:18:08:15
Robert
Yeah, absolutely. And I you know, I think from an end user perspective, it's it's really going to change little things that add up to bigger things, you know, these little sort of inconveniences that are faced all day, every day. Suddenly will disappear. And I think like I say, I think perhaps Teams Phone Mobile is greater than the sum of its parts.

00:18:08:21 - 00:18:25:04
Tom
Yeah. I mean, I'm bullish on some time. Not I don't miss it. It's gone slower than I thought it would. And I think that's just because of the speed of operators. With all due respect to the speed of, the market, you know, telephony, telephony market, just move slow. I think at some point you'll be you buy your business mobile.

00:18:25:04 - 00:18:36:15
Tom
Obviously Cisco have a similar type of, of I'm sure the other users will obviously be something you'll be like, obviously when I buy a business mobile, I can pair it up with my favorite Ucaas.

00:18:36:17 - 00:18:39:00
Robert
Yeah, yeah. So. Absolutely.

00:18:39:01 - 00:18:50:03
Tom
Oh, Robert talk us through like, what are you seeing today in terms of use cases and where has it gone well, where is it fitting. What type of user.

00:18:50:05 - 00:19:15:20
Robert
Yeah I it's a great question. And I think there's some, some real obvious use cases for Teams Phone Mobile. You know we have field workers, we have mobile centric workers, maybe a Salesforce or an engineering team, people that are out and about all the time. but that's not where, you know, what we're seeing isn't limited to those, those use cases.

00:19:15:20 - 00:19:25:18
Robert
So we're seeing, people that are more interested in the compliance nature of the offering. So actually having that call recording follow the right.

00:19:25:18 - 00:19:38:21
Tom
So straight to kind of, the, the finserv, the legals, the people that because mobile compliance reporting has traditionally been a bit of a pain and it's usually a separate system and usually not cheap. So.

00:19:38:23 - 00:19:58:02
Robert
Quite so. So you know, I guess you could argue that there might be some cost savings there. But actually, from a compliance point of view, it really just simplifies everything, brings it together. Yeah. we see people that are keen to integrate CRM like dynamics, for example. And actually then that opens up a whole nother.

00:19:58:04 - 00:20:04:04
Tom
Oh yeah. Because all that, because all the calls are coming into the call records for Teams. So you've got the records in one place. That's a really good use case.

00:20:04:06 - 00:20:31:18
Robert
That's right. So yeah, it's it's broadening. It's getting broader. I mean, some people at the very heart of it simply want all their users to migrate to this. We're going mobile first everywhere. Yeah, it's all users in one place, one consistent set of policies. and everybody's able to sort of take advantage of those benefits. for others, it's very much more part of a wider voice strategy.

00:20:31:18 - 00:21:01:17
Robert
So, you know, they may already have that direct routing or OCN for static members of the organization. That's absolutely the most appropriate solution. But where there are other use cases, whether there are, more mobile centric workers Teams Phone Mobile slots in and takes over for that sort of population. So yeah, it's an evolving piece. And I hate to give ambiguous answers, but.

00:21:01:18 - 00:21:26:14
Tom
Yeah, we had this call, we had this conversation, I didn't it felt like there is an I initially came up with three variants that CRM one's really interesting. I think you touched on the point as well, that it's not everybody. So I don't have to like this. Multiple carriers, most like everything in the in the Teams world, I could pick a subset of users and activate them for Teams Phone Mobile and I could have classic SIP trunks with BT or anybody else for those other users.

00:21:26:14 - 00:21:29:06
Tom
And it's it's not an all or nothing.

00:21:29:08 - 00:21:38:00
Robert
Absolutely not. And yeah, you can be very flexible in your approach and just make sure that the right users have got the right sort of Teams voice solution for them.

00:21:38:00 - 00:21:52:04
Tom
Really amazing. So, Rob, if people want to find out, well, this is GA and available in the UK with BT and around the world with other operators. From a BT perspective, how do people find out more? Engage with you and your team?

00:21:52:06 - 00:22:15:11
Robert
so yeah, reach out to your BT account team. the account Teams are all well aware of the, the service, and and they will put you in touch with the right people in our organization. It may even be that you end up speaking to me. but, yeah, would would welcome the opportunity to explore areas that that, you know, Teams some of us can offer benefits.

00:22:15:13 - 00:22:31:14
Tom
Awesome. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, everybody, for listening in. And this has been, a very good deep dive, I think Teams Phone Mobile, if you've got questions or comments or thoughts or feedback on Teams Phone Mobile, we'd love to hear them as well. I'll probably, pass them on to Rob if they're two tricky, but if that's okay.

00:22:31:16 - 00:22:35:16
Tom
but yeah, thanks. Thanks for coming on the show, Rob. It's been a really good one.

00:22:35:18 - 00:22:41:10
Robert
Thank you for having me. Cheers. Tom.