Picking an Operator Connect partner is a Direct Routing decision too. Most Teams Phone estates eventually need both models running. The partner you pick now determines whether that means one provider or two.
Enterprises evaluating Operator Connect partners typically frame the decision as a choice between two Microsoft-certified PSTN models for Teams Phone. Operator Connect, with carrier-managed connectivity provisioned through the Teams Admin Center. Direct Routing, with SIP trunks into your own or a partner's Session Border Controllers. The decision looks binary. It rarely ends that way.
Switching between Operator Connect and Direct Routing depends on what you're switching. Moving a single number from one model to the other is configurable. Migrating an entire Teams tenant's voice architecture is a project, almost always with a hybrid period where both models run together. The provider you pick determines how painful that period is.
Operator Connect is Microsoft's program for carrier-managed PSTN connectivity in Teams Phone. Customers provision numbers through the Teams Admin Center. The carrier owns the PSTN side, and Microsoft maintains the certified partner list.
The benefits hold up well for the right scenarios. You get carrier-grade PSTN without managing Session Border Controllers. Provisioning is faster than Direct Routing. Number assignment and porting are handled inside the Microsoft administration experience your Teams team already uses. For organizations standardizing on Teams Phone with relatively clean voice requirements, Operator Connect removes operational overhead that Direct Routing imposes.
Microsoft publishes the certified provider list inside the Teams Admin Center, and it updates as new carriers complete certification. The list is not short, but it is narrower than the Direct Routing supplier pool. Certification requires operational integration with Microsoft, not just SIP capability. That filter matters: a certified Operator Connect partner has proven they can deliver carrier-managed PSTN at the standard Microsoft requires.
The trap is treating that filter as sufficient. Operator Connect certification proves a provider can run Operator Connect. It does not prove they can run anything else.
Operator Connect was built for a clean PSTN replacement scenario. Many enterprises do not have one.
Legacy PBX coexistence is the most common reason. Organizations migrating to Teams Phone rarely retire every analog device, paging system, fax line, and elevator phone on day one. Those endpoints need PSTN access during the transition, sometimes for years. Direct Routing accommodates that estate through SBC configuration. Operator Connect does not.
Contact center voice is another. If your contact center runs on Genesys Cloud, Five9, 8x8, or a similar platform, your inbound PSTN voice for agents arrives via SIP trunking into the contact center. Operator Connect does not handle that path. You need Direct Routing capacity, contact center SIP trunks, or both.
Specific country coverage can force the same hybrid. Operator Connect availability varies by carrier and region. Where your Operator Connect partner does not cover a country, Direct Routing fills the gap. Pure IP, for example, operates voice in 137 countries and PSTN replacement in 50+ markets. Both Operator Connect and Direct Routing run across that footprint from one network.
Complex dial plans push enterprises toward Direct Routing too. So do custom call routing rules and survivability requirements for specific user groups. The pattern is consistent: Operator Connect handles the bulk of the estate, Direct Routing handles what Operator Connect cannot.
The question assumes a single answer. There isn't one.
Switching one number from Operator Connect to Direct Routing within the same provider is operationally straightforward. The PSTN side changes; the user keeps their number and their Teams Phone experience. With a single provider operating both models, this is a configuration change, not a port.
Switching all of a tenant's users from Operator Connect to Direct Routing, or the other way, is a different operation. It requires coordinated SBC deployment or retirement, dial plan reconfiguration, call routing redesign, and a controlled cutover. There is no easy version of that move at enterprise scale.
In practice, most enterprises do neither. They run Operator Connect for the population that fits it cleanly and Direct Routing for the parts that don't. The switch is incremental and continuous, scoped per user group as the estate evolves.
What makes that workable, or unworkable, is whether both models run on the same network with the same support relationship.
Beyond standard Operator Connect partner evaluation, four questions separate providers built to handle the hybrid from providers built to sell Operator Connect alone.
Do you also operate Direct Routing on the same network? If the answer is no, you will need a second contract for Direct Routing capacity when Operator Connect runs out. You will also need a second support path when something fails between models.
Will the same engineering team support both models for our tenant? If support is split between an Operator Connect team and a Direct Routing team, you are the integration layer.
Is it one contract or two? Two contracts mean two renewal cycles and two billing relationships, with commercial terms negotiated separately.
When a user on one model and a user on the other model have a call quality problem between them, who do we call? Single-provider accountability is testable. Ask the question.
Pure IP is a certified Operator Connect provider and operates Direct Routing on the same global voice network. Both models run on the same network. One engineering relationship, one contract. That is what the switching question is really asking.