Summary: At WebexOne 2025, Cisco showed how Webex Calling is evolving with connected intelligence: new AI agents for scheduling, tasks, notes, polling, and call reception; features like live transcription, translation, summaries, noise removal, and smarter routing; hybrid support for on-prem PBXs; and massive scale with 8 billion monthly calls, 18 million users, and PSTN coverage in 65+ countries.
WebexOne 2025 set out a clear vision: AI’s future isn’t in scattered tools, but in connected intelligence — a layer that runs through meetings, messaging, and calling to make every interaction smarter and more secure.
With Webex Calling, Cisco positions voice as a clear example of that vision. The phone system is no longer just about connecting calls. As AI moves into the core of enterprise communication, the phone system shifts from carrying conversations to actively shaping them — capturing tasks, providing translation, and safeguarding against threats.
Long treated as a utility, calling is being reshaped into a frontline of connected intelligence, proof that the most established channel in enterprise communication can also be the one that changes fastest.
Here’s how Cisco is reengineering the phone system with Webex Calling for an AI-driven era of enterprise communications.
From chatbots to colleagues
At WebexOne, Cisco put its AI roadmap on display, not as a set of helpers but as a new class of agents designed to carry out actual tasks.
Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s President and Chief Product Officer, described the shift:
We’re squarely in the next era of AI where we’re moving from this notion of chatbots that intelligently answer our questions to agents that are going to conduct tasks and jobs almost fully autonomously on our behalf.
The first example will be a scheduling agent slated for late 2025. Instead of users trading emails or hunting for slots, it decides who should attend, scans calendars, and books the meeting. In a world of bloated diaries, that’s less a novelty than a relief.
From early 2026, Cisco expects a broader rollout:
- Task agent: Pulls follow-ups from Webex meeting summaries and executes them directly in systems like Jira.
- Note taker: Captures in-person conversations through a laptop, phone, or Cisco’s new RoomOS 26 hardware, producing transcripts, summaries, and action lists.
- Polling agent: Monitors meeting discussions and launches a poll at the right moment, even drafting questions inside Cisco’s Slido app.
- AI receptionist for Webex Calling: Answers calls, handles routine requests, and escalates when needed, showing how voice is being folded into the same AI framework.
The emphasis was on autonomy. Cisco isn’t pitching these as features bolted onto apps, but as embedded agents that take on the busywork that usually clogs a workday.
Every call now counts
Rather than letting calls vanish into the noise of the workday, Cisco is building AI into Webex Calling so each interaction delivers insight.
- Live transcription and translation. Calls can be captured in real time, with instant translation for multi-lingual teams. That removes barriers and speeds up global collaboration.
- Summaries and action items. Beyond transcripts, the system pulls out key points and decisions. A supplier call, for instance, might be distilled into a note: “Confirm order quantities by Friday.”
- Cleaner audio. Background noise removal — already familiar in meetings — now applies to voice, filtering out traffic, typing, or barking dogs.
- Smarter routing and analytics. AI can learn call patterns to reduce misdirected transfers and wasted minutes.
The aim is to shift voice from a fleeting interaction into a structured channel — transcribed, translated, analyzed, and secured as part of everyday business workflows.
AI for the companies still stuck on-prem
Full cloud migrations remain out of reach for many organizations. Legacy PBXs are often tied to compliance rules, regulator requirements, or decades of investment that can’t be written off overnight.
Cisco’s answer is Webex Calling Hybrid, a way to bring AI capabilities to on-prem systems. Features like transcription, fraud detection, and analytics can now run on calls that still originate from a traditional PBX.
The move acknowledges that hybrid isn’t a stopgap. For banks, healthcare providers, and other highly regulated industries, on-prem will remain a permanent fixture. The pitch is straightforward: keep the infrastructure you need, and let Cisco’s AI layer add the intelligence on top.
It’s a pragmatic move that positions hybrid as a lasting reality in enterprise communications, reflecting the way many organizations already operate.
Eight billion calls don’t lie
Webex Calling now processes around 8 billion calls a month, serving more than 18 million users. It operates quietly at massive scale, with global reach it says outpaces any rival.
Large-scale usage gives the platform an advantage: the ability to refine performance under real-world conditions. Features like transcription, routing, and fraud detection become more reliable the more widely they are used.
Geography adds another edge. Webex Calling now provides compliant PSTN replacement in more than 65 countries. For multinationals, that capability often determines which provider they choose, since local numbering is a prerequisite before any AI features even come into play.
Coexisting with Microsoft Teams
In enterprise collaboration, every platform ends up compared with Microsoft Teams. At WebexOne, that reality was acknowledged directly, with coexistence framed as the practical path forward.
Many enterprises already run both platforms. Webex Calling is positioned as the anchor for voice that integrates into Teams workflows, with hardware and services built to operate across ecosystems rather than force consolidation.
A new step this year was bi-directional integration between Copilot and Webex. AI-generated notes and actions can now move in either direction: a Teams user can see outcomes from a Webex meeting, and a Webex user can pick up insights from Copilot. It reflects the way work actually happens — across platforms, not inside a single walled garden.
The strategy is pragmatic. Competing with Teams in chat and meetings isn’t realistic, but becoming indispensable for secure, global, AI-powered calling — and enabling intelligence to flow freely between tools — is a role Webex can credibly claim.
The bigger picture: voice reimagined
The strongest takeaway from WebexOne in calling wasn’t that voice is fading, but that it is being reshaped for the future.
Voice still matters because it is often where interactions begin — with customers, with suppliers, with colleagues who need to talk instead of type. The argument is that, in the coming years, calling could become the most enhanced and most secure channel in the enterprise stack.
At WebexOne, we saw how calling fits into a wider layer of workplace intelligence. Features like the AI receptionist, hybrid support, and global coverage aren’t stand-alone announcements; they form a deliberate strategy to shift calling from background utility to business asset.
The phone call is no longer a leftover from the past. It is being rebuilt into something smarter, safer, and harder to ignore.
Webex Calling shows what’s possible. Pure IP’s Cloud Connect services make it practical with global, compliant coverage. Speak to us about bringing it to your business.
