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Both options add phone calling to Microsoft Teams — but the difference between them matters more than most IT teams realize. Here's the honest comparison for NYC businesses.
If you're adding phone calling to Microsoft Teams, you have three options: Microsoft Calling Plans, Direct Routing, or Operator Connect. Most NYC businesses can rule out Calling Plans quickly — they're the most expensive option with the least flexibility. That leaves Direct Routing vs. Operator Connect.
These two options look similar on paper. Both connect Microsoft Teams to the public telephone network. Both let you keep your existing phone numbers. Both work with the same Teams licensing. The difference is in how the connection is built — and that difference impacts your IT team's workload for years.
Here's the honest comparison.
Direct Routing is Microsoft's original BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) option. You connect Teams to your chosen telecom carrier using a Session Border Controller (SBC) — a piece of hardware (or virtual appliance) that sits between Microsoft's cloud and your SIP trunk provider.
To deploy Direct Routing, your IT team (or a vendor) needs to:
None of this is impossible. But it's months of work for a competent IT team, and ongoing maintenance forever. When something breaks, you're triaging between Microsoft, your SBC vendor, and your SIP carrier — three vendors, three support queues.
Operator Connect is Microsoft's newer program where approved telecom operators connect directly to your Microsoft 365 tenant through Microsoft-managed infrastructure. There's no SBC. There's no SIP trunk to provision. There's no PowerShell.
To deploy Operator Connect, you:
That's it. Microsoft and the operator handle the underlying integration. No SBC for you to deploy. No firmware to patch. No three-way troubleshooting when calls fail. If something breaks, you call the operator — they own the connection end-to-end.
Direct Routing: Typically 4-8 weeks. SBC procurement, deployment, configuration, testing, user enablement, and pilot all take real time.
Operator Connect: Typically 1-2 weeks, plus 5-10 business days for number porting. The technical setup is days, not weeks.
Direct Routing: Your IT team (or vendor) maintains the SBC indefinitely. Firmware updates, security patches, certificate renewals, monitoring, and capacity planning are all your responsibility. Even if you outsource the SBC management, someone is paying for it every month.
Operator Connect: Zero infrastructure to maintain. The operator handles everything on the carrier side; Microsoft handles everything on the cloud side. Your IT team's only ongoing involvement is normal Teams admin tasks.
Direct Routing: Lower per-minute or per-user cost at very large scale (1,000+ users). But there's a high fixed cost — SBC hardware/license, deployment labor, SIP trunk minimums, ongoing maintenance. The break-even where Direct Routing becomes cheaper than Operator Connect is around 500-1,000 users for most businesses.
Operator Connect: Slightly higher per-user pricing than Direct Routing at huge scale, but no fixed infrastructure costs. For NYC businesses with 10-500 users, Operator Connect almost always wins on total cost of ownership.
Direct Routing: When calls fail, you triage between Microsoft Teams support, your SBC vendor, and your SIP carrier. Each one points at the other.
Operator Connect: One support relationship — the operator. They own the connection end-to-end with Microsoft.
Direct Routing: Maximum flexibility. You can route calls through specific SBCs, integrate with on-premises PBXs, configure complex dial plans, and customize protocols. If you need this level of control, Direct Routing is the right choice.
Operator Connect: Less granular control, but covers everything 95% of businesses actually need. The Operator Connect API gives operators standardized capabilities — fine for most use cases, limiting for unusual ones.
Direct Routing is the right choice if you have:
Operator Connect is the right choice if you have:
For the typical NYC small to mid-size business, Operator Connect is the right answer. The operational simplicity, faster deployment, and unified support outweigh the marginal cost savings of Direct Routing at smaller scale. Most businesses that chose Direct Routing 3-4 years ago — when Operator Connect didn't exist or wasn't mature — are now evaluating whether to migrate.
If you're starting fresh on Teams Phone in 2026, Operator Connect is almost always the right starting point. You can always migrate to Direct Routing later if your needs change. The reverse migration — Direct Routing to Operator Connect — is harder.
Callifi delivers Microsoft Teams Phone through Operator Connect for NYC and tri-state businesses. We handle the operator setup, number porting, call flow design, user assignment, training, and ongoing support. You get phone calling in Teams without the SBC headache.
Call (212) 423-1234 or schedule a free assessment. We'll look at your Microsoft 365 setup, your current phone system, and recommend the right path — even if that path isn't Teams Phone.
