The part nobody mentions until after you've paid
Microsoft sells Teams Phone Standard as an add-on to Microsoft 365. It gives Teams the ability to behave like a phone: a dial pad, call transfer, hold, an auto attendant, call queues.
What it does not give you is a connection to the public telephone network. For that, Microsoft normally sells a Calling Plan — minutes and a phone number, billed per user.
Microsoft does not sell Calling Plans in Jamaica. Their own availability documentation lists, for Jamaica: Calling Plans available to purchase — No. Toll numbers — No. Toll-free numbers — No.
So a Jamaican business can buy the Teams Phone licence and still not be able to ring anyone.
The two ways round it
Direct Routing. A licensed carrier connects their network to your Microsoft tenant through a Session Border Controller. Teams becomes the phone, and the carrier provides the numbers and the minutes. This is what we do, and it is included in our Professional seat rather than sold as an extra.
Operator Connect. Same idea, but the carrier is listed inside the Teams admin centre and the setup is click-through instead of configured. Fewer carriers participate, and in Jamaica the practical answer today is Direct Routing.
Either way you need a local carrier. That is not a sales pitch — it is arithmetic about which companies are allowed to terminate calls on Jamaican networks.
What it costs to get it right
Two things are being bought, and it is worth seeing them separately:
- Microsoft's licence. Teams Phone Standard, billed by Microsoft, per user per month. It is not ours and we do
not mark it up.
- The calling. Numbers, minutes, the SBC and the support when something stops working. Ours: J$1,200
per user per month as an add-on to an Essential seat, and already included in Professional at J$4,900 per user per month.
Both figures exclude GCT. The full rate card is on our pricing section.
The question to ask any provider
Ask who runs the SBC, and what happens at 9pm on a Friday when Teams calls stop connecting. If the answer involves a ticket with an overseas vendor and a business-hours queue, you have bought a licence, not a phone system.
We run the SBC, we provision the numbers, and we document the setup so your IT provider can see exactly what was configured and why.