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
