Direct calls in and out of Microsoft Teams from anyone’s laptop, mobile or desk handset, on the same number you already have. No PBX, no separate phone bill, no on-premise box gathering dust in a cupboard.
If your business already runs on Microsoft 365, you’ve already paid for half the platform. Teams Phone bolts a proper UK business phone service on top of the Teams app, so calls in and out of your existing main number land alongside chat, email and meetings. No second app to install, no separate phone bill, no clunky desk handset that nobody wants to learn.
Your team can take a customer call from their laptop in a meeting room, then continue it from their phone on the way to the car park, on the same number. Receptionists stop being human switchboards. Hot-desking just works because the phone is the person, not the seat.
See Microsoft 365 services →No PBX, no SIP gateway, no phone server. Everything runs in Microsoft 365. Optional desk phones if you want them, but most teams just use the Teams app.
Most of our clients save 25–40% versus their old combined PBX maintenance, line rental and call charges, before counting recovered IT time.
From signed proposal to fully ported numbers, usually 2–4 weeks including a parallel-run window so nothing breaks during the changeover.
Not a watered-down version of an enterprise phone system. The features your team actually uses every day, properly configured, with someone to call when things look odd.
Direct dial to and from any UK or international number, billed per second. Bundled UK calling minutes included on most plans.
“Press 1 for sales” menus, hunt groups, ring-all groups and overflow rules. Built natively in Teams admin centre, not a third-party bolt-on.
Teams Phone has built-in single-call recording. For always-on, tenant-wide compliant recording with retention, search and audit trail, we layer in a certified add-on partner (CallCabinet, Dubber or similar) tuned to your sector’s rules.
Voicemails arrive as audio plus a text transcript directly in your inbox. Easy to forward, search and act on without picking up the phone.
Sign in to any Teams-certified desk phone or device and your number, contacts and call history follow you. Perfect for shift workers and shared desks.
Live and historical reports for receptionists, sales and support: answered, abandoned, average wait, longest wait, agent availability.
We map your current numbers, queues, hunt groups and call flows. Document who answers what, when, and how that should look on Teams.
We provision Teams Phone licences, configure auto-attendants, queues and policies in your Microsoft 365 tenant. No new admin portals to learn.
We start the port of your existing main number with the carrier. Teams Phone runs alongside your old PBX during the cutover so nothing drops.
Numbers cut across, old system retired, short training session per team and a written cheat-sheet on the desk. We monitor closely for the first week.
The right answer depends on your size and complexity, but for most UK SMBs already on Microsoft 365, Teams Phone wins on simplicity, cost and future-proofing.
| Traditional PBX | Standalone VoIP | Microsoft Teams Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Works after the PSTN switch-off | No | Yes | Yes |
| Single bill / single supplier | No | Separate provider | Inside Microsoft 365 |
| Mobile, laptop, desk phone, all on one number | Limited | Usually | Yes, native |
| On-premise hardware | Required | Optional | None |
| Native integration with Outlook calendar & presence | No | Limited | Yes |
| Compliant call recording | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on (certified partners) |
| Resilience & redundancy | Single-site | Provider-dependent | Microsoft global SLA |
| One IT partner for phone, email, security & devices | No | No | Yes |
Teams Phone runs perfectly well from a laptop with a decent USB headset. About a third of our rollouts ship with no desk phones at all.
For receptionists, manufacturing floors, or anyone who simply prefers a physical handset, we supply Teams-certified Yealink, Poly or Jabra devices, configured and asset-tagged before they hit your desk.
Jabra Evolve2 or Poly Voyager, USB or Bluetooth, with proper microphone arrays. Far better call quality than a built-in laptop mic, and a fraction of the cost of a desk handset.
For receptionists, shared desks and anyone who prefers a physical handset. Sign-in linked to the person, so the same phone follows whoever sits at it.
Microsoft Teams Rooms certified speakerphones and Yealink room systems for boardrooms, with one-touch join and integrated calling.
Yes. We handle the porting end-to-end with the carrier, including the parallel-run window so neither inbound nor outbound calls drop during the transition. Customers never know you switched.
We’ll review your existing contract before recommending a switch. In most cases we time the Teams Phone go-live with your renewal so you avoid early-termination charges. Where there’s overlap, the savings usually pay it back inside a few months.
Per-person, monthly. There are a few licence routes (Teams Phone Standard plus a Microsoft Calling Plan, Operator Connect with a UK carrier, or Direct Routing) and the right answer depends on your call volume and current 365 licensing. We’ll spec the cheapest combination that fits your call patterns.
Teams Phone supports emergency calling, with the registered address tied to each location. We configure this properly during rollout so 999 always routes to the correct local emergency services control room.
Teams Phone is bandwidth-light per call (around 100 Kbps). It works on most decent UK SMB connections including 4G/5G failover. We’ll review your broadband during discovery and recommend any tweaks needed.
Yes, via an add-on. Teams Phone itself includes manual single-call recording, but for always-on, tenant-wide, compliant recording (with retention, search, audit trail and policies aligned to FCA, SRA, MiFID II or your sector) we layer in a Microsoft-certified recording partner such as CallCabinet, Dubber or NICE. Initial IT specs and configures this as part of the rollout, so the recording, retention and DLP rules are joined up with the rest of your Microsoft 365 environment.
For most 10–50 person UK businesses, expect somewhere between £9 and £18 per person per month all-in for Teams Phone licensing and UK calling, plus optional headsets or desk phones. We’ll quote a fixed monthly price after a 30-min scoping call.
30 focused minutes with Andy or one of our senior engineers. We’ll review your current phone setup, your Microsoft 365 licences, and what a clean Teams Phone rollout would look like for your team. Honest figures, no pressure.
Prefer to talk now? Call 01543 524594 or email hello@initialit.co.uk.
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