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Microsoft Teams Phone System Porting Issues and Direct Routing

Geoff Whidden

Dec 11 2020

2 min read

Microsoft Teams has been one of the fastest growing products ever for Microsoft this year. By combining persistent chat, collaboration, voice and video into a single cloud-based platform, it is uniquely built for these challenging times dominated by remote work.

This growth, however, has not come without some challenges. Adoption of the Microsoft Phone System with Teams has been so rapid that substantial delays are occurring when porting numbers to Microsoft Phone System from existing solutions. While coordinating the cutover of a customer’s phone numbers to Microsoft has always been challenging, with up front planning required to execute properly, the current rush of customers to this platform has introduced delays of up to 10 days before Microsoft will even respond to porting requests.

Sikich is advising any customer who is porting over numbers to Microsoft Phone System with Calling Plans to plan for up to a 30 days for the porting to occur from the time of the initial porting request. This would only be the case if a customer chooses to use the Microsoft Calling Plan.

However, Calling Plans are not the only way that a customer can supply dial tone to Microsoft Phone System. As an alternative, customers can opt to use Direct Routing. Direct Routing allows the customer to use a voice provider other than Microsoft to provide dial tone to the solution. As this solution require a Session Border Controller (SBC), there is a higher upfront cost. SBC’s can be deployed on premises or as a virtual appliance on a cloud provider. Since our objective on these projects is to reduce IT footprint on premises, we prefer a virtual appliance deployed on Azure.

how the Microsoft Phone System with Azure SBC

We feel that this is a good alternative to the lengthy porting delays that Microsoft in encountering at the moment, especially if an organization has a larger user number of phone numbers.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Sikich at and we would be glad to discuss either design with you.

This publication contains general information only and Sikich is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or any other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should you use it as a basis for any decision, action or omission that may affect you or your business. Before making any decision, taking any action or omitting an action that may affect you or your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. In addition, this publication may contain certain content generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) language model. You acknowledge that Sikich shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by you or any person who relies on this publication.

About the Author

Geoff Whidden

As a Solution Architect, I design data networks for small to medium organizations (5-500 seat). Emphasis is on platform and applicatiton cloud services. I currently manage the network Solution Architects at Sikich and am the technical lead and Cloud Soltuion Architect for the Microsoft Azure Practice. Specialties: Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Windows Server, Hyper-V, Windows Failover Cluster, Active Directory, Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, Cisco ASA Firewalls, Switches and Routers