Microsoft Teams Phone System Operator Connect Pricing

What is the pricing for Operator Connect, for Microsoft Teams Phone System?

In the short video below, Mike explains the cost of Operator Connect for both small and large companies, and also explains the additional licensing costs for Microsoft 365.

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About Mike

Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. You can also hear him as the host of the popular Information Technology podcast, ITsmiths with Mike Smith. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company is looking into Microsoft Teams Phone System to replace your current PBX system, and you’ve heard about Operator Connect, and you want to know, what’s the pricing on it?

Well, I wanted to make a quick video explaining that, but before I get started, if you want to know which Microsoft Teams Phone System Operator Connect providers you should be quoting for your organization, contact me today. Shoot me an email. Give me a call (714.593.0011). I’m happy to help. More information on that at the end of the video.

What is Operator Connect?

Okay. Operator Connect pricing. How does it work?

Well, Operator Connect is essentially a service where you’re getting dial tone from a third party provider, and they are integrating that dial tone into your Microsoft Teams Tenant. So, your users are using Microsoft Teams phone system, and when they go to receive a call or make a call, that dial tone is actually coming from a third party provider, and Operator Connect allows you to manage the phone numbers and all that for those separate providers within the Microsoft admin portal.

You might want to watch my video I did before on what is Operator Connect. That might help a little bit too. So, but considering it’s a third party provider, the pricing for Operator Connect is different, depending on the service provider that you use.

Small Companies

Okay. So, there’s a lot of different pricing plans out there. So, if you’re a small organization, expect the pricing to be about $10, give or take a couple dollars, $10 or so per month per user for Operator Connect. Then, in addition to that, you’re going to still have to have the phone system feature for every single user as well. So, depending on what license level you have, if you have an E5 license today, you already have the phone system feature, so you don’t have to add that.

But if you have an E3 or an E1 or Business Premium or Business Essentials, if you have one of those for your Office 365 licensing, you’re going to have to add the phone system feature. Then, you’re going to have to add the calling plan from the Operator Connect service provider.

Larger Companies

So that’s, if you’re a small business, expect to pay around $10 or so per user, but if you are a larger company, like 100 or more users, you can expect some better discounts on that Operator Connect pricing. Nice, right? So, if you’re a large company, you can sometimes pay as low as $3, $4 per month, per user, and maybe you purchase the minute separately.

Metered Pricing & Other Options

Some service providers offer pricing on a metered minute basis, so you pay for calling minutes as you use them, for incoming calls, outgoing calls. Some service providers bundle in minutes, and they give you a certain small amount of bundled minutes with every single user, and you can pool that bundle among all the users.

So, at the end of the day, it ends up being enough minutes for you so that you don’t get charged any meter usage. Pricing. Other service providers do things, they get kind of creative with it, where they charge you a small fee per month per user, like $1 to $3 per month per user, and then they charge you for are simultaneous call pads separately. Like, for instance, you might pay $20 per month per simultaneous call path that you have active. So, you think about, okay, our busiest time of the day, how many calls are taking place simultaneously? If you have 1000 employees in your company, maybe you say, okay, maybe we have 100 calls taking place. Maybe we have 200 calls taking place at the busiest time. So, you’d pay for 200 simultaneous call pads at $20 per month, per call path.

Then, you pay like $1 to $3 per month per user on top of that. So, the pricing can get a little creative as you have more users be, because obviously, they’re not going to charge you $10 per month per user if you have 1000 users, and give you unlimited usage on every single user. That would obviously be complete overkill. You’d be paying way too much money for way too much usage. So, some of the service providers for Operator Connect have gotten creative in how they’re offering their calling plan pricing to larger companies.

More Questions on Operator Connect?

So, if that starts to get a little bit confusing, don’t worry. That’s totally normal. It’s confusing to a lot of people. That’s why I’m around. So, if you want to know which service providers have the best pricing plan for Operator Connect for your company, just email or call me today (714.593.0011).

I’m happy to ask a few questions about your usage patterns. Do you have a call center? Do you have 800 numbers? What type of calling do you do? How many locations, how many people, that type of thing. Once I get all that information, I’ll tell you the best three to five service providers your company should quote and why, and I’ll also introduce you to the right people within those organizations and oversee the quoting process for you to make sure you get the best pricing from those service providers. The best news of all, is my service is free. So, as a broker, the service providers pay for our broker fee, not you. So, no excuse not to reach out. I’m happy to help.

If this video is helpful, please hit the Like button down below, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, so we get rid of all those crazy commercials before the videos. YouTube has a thing where until you get to 1000 users, they can just put advertisements on your videos no matter what. So, let’s get to 1000 subscribers, and get rid of those advertisements. So, hope that was helpful, and I will catch you on the next one. Thanks for watching.