The Business Voice Stack
Business Voice is hosted SIP plus softphones plus Teams or Webex integration plus E911 — a unified-communications stack on one Verizon Business master account. The hosted-SIP core runs in Verizon data centres on session border controllers that register the customer's phone numbers and route calls to either the customer's PBX, their softphone clients or directly to a Microsoft Teams tenant or Cisco Webex tenant via Direct Routing. Local-number portability inbound from any North American carrier is supported; porting out to another carrier follows standard LNP windows.
The underlying transport is the customer's existing Fios, 5G Business Internet or DIA circuit — the voice service does not require a dedicated voice-only circuit. Voice traffic is prioritised via DSCP marking at the SD-WAN edge (where one exists, through Network Solutions managed SD-WAN) and monitored end-to-end with MOS-score telemetry visible in the My Verizon dashboard alongside wireless lines and circuits.
Voice Reference
- Hosted SIP trunking with E164 numbering and LNP in and out.
- Softphone clients on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android with video.
- Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and Cisco Webex integration.
- Auto-attendant, hunt groups, call queues, voicemail-to-email.
- E911 dispatchable location per Ray Baum Act and Kari's Law.
Plan Tiers and Sizing
Business Voice sizes by seat count and feature tier, from small-team deployments up through enterprise-wide Teams integration. A small-team tier covers up to ten seats with softphone clients, inbound and outbound PSTN minutes, basic auto-attendant and voicemail-to-email. A standard-office tier adds desk phones, hunt groups and call queues for seat counts from ten up to one hundred. An integrated tier adds Teams Direct Routing or Webex integration and scales to several thousand seats on a single tenant with regional session border controllers for geographic redundancy.
PSTN minute allowances vary by tier — included bundles of domestic minutes run from a few thousand per seat per month on entry tiers up to unlimited domestic on integrated tiers. International minutes are billed per-minute to published rate decks. International-calling add-ons for customers with heavy international volume are available on quote. Toll-free inbound terminating numbers are priced per-minute with a small monthly DID fee.
| Plan | Users | Features | PSTN Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voice Essentials | 1 – 10 | Softphone, voicemail, basic IVR | 2,000 / user / month |
| Voice Standard | 10 – 100 | + desk phones, hunt groups, queues | 3,500 / user / month |
| Voice Integrated | 100 – 5,000 | + Teams Direct Routing or Webex | Unlimited domestic |
| POTS Replacement | Per line | ATA + battery, alarm/elevator cert | Metered domestic |
Microsoft Teams Direct Routing
Direct Routing turns the Microsoft Teams client into the business phone without Microsoft Calling Plans. Verizon Business registers as the PSTN carrier for the customer's Teams tenant, provisions session border controllers at the voice core and delivers the inbound and outbound trunk. Users dial directly from the Teams client — dialpad, click-to-call from contact cards, received-call pop — and inbound calls ring the Teams desktop, mobile or web client on the user's registered devices.
Provisioning takes five to ten business days from signed order to first call. Number porting from the customer's incumbent carrier happens in parallel. Cisco Webex integration follows the same provisioning pattern on the Webex Calling PSTN-Trunk side. Customers running a legacy PBX can keep the PBX in place during migration and cut over per-department or per-site, with the hosted-SIP trunk terminating both the PBX and the Teams or Webex tenant during the transition window.
E911 and Compliance
E911 dispatchable location is registered per user and per session border controller; updates push automatically when a softphone user moves between registered locations. The Ray Baum Act and Kari's Law set the compliance baseline — public-safety answering points must receive a dispatchable location (room or floor, not just a street address) on 911 calls, and a call must complete without dialling a prefix for an outside line. Verizon Business Business Voice satisfies both.
Administration of the E911 location database runs in the My Verizon dashboard. The primary administrator uploads a location-identifier spreadsheet or API-provisions locations through the documented interface; changes take effect within five minutes. Softphone users who move between pre-registered locations — hot-desking across multiple offices — have their dispatchable location update automatically based on the switch port or Wi-Fi BSSID. Customer data handling aligns with the FTC privacy framework.
POTS Replacement and Legacy Lines
Managed POTS replacement retires legacy copper analogue lines for alarm panels, elevator emergency phones, fax machines and similar legacy devices. The replacement hardware is a managed analogue telephone adapter with a 24-hour battery sled and power-fail cutover. The ATA registers to the hosted-SIP core over the customer's business-internet underlay and presents a standard FXS port to the legacy device. Ring voltage, loop current and hook-state signalling match the incumbent analogue behaviour.
Legacy-line compliance is the selling point. Elevator emergency phones fall under NFPA 72 and state elevator codes; alarm panels fall under NFPA 72 and UL 864 depending on class. The managed POTS-replacement product ships with certifications for the common compliance regimes and with documentation suitable for the local authority having jurisdiction. Copper-line retirement by the ILEC often forces this replacement on a schedule set by the incumbent.
Operational Surface and Billing
Business Voice appears alongside wireless, Fios and IoT in the same My Verizon dashboard on the same master account. Number inventory, trunk capacity, session border controller health, MOS-score telemetry, E911 location registrations and call-detail records for the last twelve months are all visible to the primary administrator. Role-scoped administrators can see voice-only if the primary admin grants the voice-admin role under role-based access.
Billing runs through the same billing portal as the rest of the portfolio — one invoice covers wireless lines, Fios circuits, voice seats, PSTN minute overages and POTS-replacement lines. Federal universal-service-fund contributions run under the USAC framework. International-calling rate decks update quarterly; current rates are visible in the support hub knowledge base under the voice product.