The communications landscape has evolved rapidly over the last couple of years. Companies are now embracing new methods of connecting with colleagues and customers across multiple platforms and channels. Perhaps most importantly, the cloud-based platforms have become the central hub of the communications environment for most agile brands.
In this rapidly changing space, companies have become more accustomed to having increased flexibility in their communication services and solutions. The “Bring Your Own” concept in technology has allowed organisations to implement everything from their own choice of meeting room to their preferred devices into the communications stack.
“Bring Your Own Carrier” is one of the most recent trends to emerge in this ecosystem. Essentially, Bring Your Own Carrier gives organisations more freedom over the telephony provider they bring to their digital contact centres, video conferencing, or UC environment.
Understanding “Bring Your Own Carrier”
Bring your Own Carrier, or “BYOC”, is a concept which has begun to gain more attention during the rise of collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams. Microsoft recognised that its own Calling Plans wouldn’t be suitable for every business, so it introduced “Direct Routing” as a way for companies to plug their existing telephony vendors into the ecosystem.
Since then, “BYOC” strategies have increased in popularity, with more vendors now offering companies a chance to choose which communications vendor they use for their technology stack. With BYOC, companies can benefit from continued access to the reliable and consistent services they’ve come to expect from their communications vendor.
BYOC can also give organisations more control over their telephony, with enterprise-level SIP trunking, flexible SBCs, and various unique features. Additionally, businesses can scale more efficiently with access to preferred pricing and loyalty bonuses from carriers. Some of the most significant benefits of BYOC include:
- Resilient and redundant voice communications within any environment
- Supporting APIs for automations and integrations
- Easy-to-use customer portals for carrier and phone system management
- Consistent and reliable communication services across many regions
- Future-proof scalability without the need for additional expense
For service providers in the UCaaS and CCaaS space, BYOC also offers another opportunity to deliver customised and bespoke services to end-users. A Microsoft Teams service provider, for instance, can provide their clients with access to Direct Routing or Operator Connect features as part of a comprehensive Teams-based UCaaS stack.
“Business Customers are increasingly aware of the flexibility and benefits they can gain from unbundling core call control platforms (PBX or UCaaS) from the carrier that provides minutes and numbers.
This approach provides benefits for the operator and the customer by removing barriers to business where incumbent arrangements are in-place; the customer can keep the provider of one part of the solution and adopt the services of a new provider for the other part.
Looking forward, we are seeing this separation as becoming normal, it’s a bit like with mobile phones, the phone hardware, and the airtime contract were originally sold as a bundled subscription, now they are two separate purchasing decisions. Customers are able to get a combination that suits them best and choose from a wider market.
The increased mobilization of the workforce is also driving BYOC. With a multinational workforce requiring telephony access in a range of countries, no one carrier or UCaaS can cover it all.”
– Mark Herbert, Head of Partner Innovation, Dstny Automate
How Does BYOC Work?
As platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and similar solutions become more popular in the modern workplace, companies don’t want to switch away from an existing communications vendor to implement new technology.
BYOC solutions mean end-users can leverage the new features and functionality of the communication tools, CCaaS systems, and conferencing platforms they love without compromising on the telephony aspect.
Essentially, Bring Your Own Carrier involves allowing a business to choose a SIP trunk provider as the central layer of the communication stack. With BYOC, companies maintain ownership over their own PSTN access solution. They get to pick the SIP trunking system, the APIs and integrations they use, and a range of other features, like cloud-native Session Border Controllers.
When Does BYOC Make Sense?
Bring Your Own Carrier solutions provide more flexibility and agility within the communication stack for end-users. As companies continue to transition into the cloud, they often want to avoid replacing expensive initial investments with brand-new full-stack solutions. A BYOC offering allows brands to build a more sustainable, customisable stack suited to their needs.
BYOC systems ensure business leaders don’t worry about leaving multi-year communication contracts behind. Moreover, this strategy can give organisations more freedom to access different features and communication functionality in various locations worldwide. Bring Your Own Carrier can reduce many migration issues associated with moving to the cloud.
However, it’s not just businesses who benefit from Bring Your Own Carrier functionality. Service providers and communication vendors hoping to compete in the current marketplace can also leverage various advantages. For instance, in the Microsoft Teams environment, only around 13% of companies use Teams Calling plans to connect their PSTN to the digital landscape.
Teams has 270 million active users, but most of these do not yet have any voice services plugged in. This gives service providers an opportunity to invest in a BYOC platform and take advantage of this opportunity.
The Future of Bring Your Own Carrier
As today’s business leaders continue to prioritise customised and bespoke solutions for communications and collaboration, the demand for BYOC technology will likely continue growing. For end-users and enterprises, the environment allows for a future-proof model of accessing telephony functionality exactly how and when they need it most.
