Set up Microsoft Calling Plans

This article describes how to set up Microsoft Calling Plans with Teams Phone. This solution is the simplest option that connects Teams Phone to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for external calling. With this option, Microsoft acts as your PSTN carrier.

This article assumes that you already have Teams Phone licenses for your users, which is a requirement for purchasing Calling Plans. If you do not have a Teams Phone license, see Set up Teams Phone.

For more information about all Microsoft Calling Plan options, see Calling Plans for Teams.

For more information about Teams Phone, see What is Teams Phone.

Step 1: Find out if Calling Plans are available in your country/region

Go to Country and region availability for Audio Conferencing and Calling Plans and select your country or region to get availability information about Calling Plans.

If Calling Plans aren't available for your country or region, see PSTN connectivity options for other available PSTN connectivity options.

Step 2: Buy and assign licenses

  1. After you buy and assign Teams Phone licenses, you can purchase Calling Plans for Teams Phone. For more information, see Microsoft Teams add-on licensing.

  2. Assign a Calling Plan license to the people in your organization. See Assign Microsoft Teams add-on licenses.

    If you purchase a Pay-As-You-Go Calling Plan, you may need to purchase Communication Credits. To determine if you need to purchase Communication Credits, see How to fund a Pay-As-You-Go Calling Plan.

Step 3: Get phone numbers

There are three ways to get new user numbers:

  • Use the Teams admin center. For some countries/regions, you can get numbers for your users by using the Teams admin center, see Get phone numbers for your users.

  • Port your existing numbers. You can port or transfer existing numbers from your current service provider or phone carrier to Microsoft 365. After you port your phone numbers to Teams, Microsoft will become your service provider and will bill you for those phone numbers. For more information, see Transfer phone numbers to Teams.

  • Use a request form for new numbers. Sometimes (depending on your country/region) you won't be able to get your new phone numbers using the Teams admin center, or you'll need specific phone numbers or area codes. If so, you'll need to download a form and send it back to us. For more information, see Manage phone numbers for your organization.

Step 4: Add emergency addresses and locations for your organization

An emergency address must be associated with a phone number. When this association happens can vary among country and regions. For example, in the United States, you need to associate an emergency address when you assign the phone number to the user. In the United Kingdom, you need to associate an emergency address to the phone number when you're getting the phone numbers from Microsoft 365, or when transferring phone numbers from your current service provider.

For information about emergency calling and managing emergency addresses, see Manage emergency calling.

Step 5: Assign an emergency address and a phone number to a user

You must assign a phone number and an emergency address to each of your users. The emergency address must be created before you can associate it with a phone number. For more information, see Assign or change an emergency address and Assign a phone number.

Tip

If you add more people to your business right before doing this step, it may take several hours for them to appear on the Voice users page.

Step 6: Tell your users about their new phone numbers

Microsoft recommends sending mail or using your business's preferred communication method to tell the people about their new phone numbers.

In Microsoft Teams, users can see their phone number by selecting Calls in the left navigation. The phone number is shown above the dial pad.

Run a Self-diagnostics tool

Microsoft 365 admin users have access to diagnostics that can be run within the tenant to verify a user is properly configured to make or receive PSTN calls.

Note

This feature isn't available for Microsoft 365 Government, Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet, or Microsoft 365 Germany.

Select Run Tests, as follows. This will populate the diagnostic in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

The diagnostic performs a large range of verifications.

Transferring phone numbers common questions

Different kinds of phone numbers used for Calling Plans

Manage phone numbers for your organization

Manage emergency calling

Emergency calling terms and conditions

Teams: Emergency Calling disclaimer label