Updates to Skype for Business & Microsoft Teams

Thursday 19th October 2017

As announced at Ignite, Microsoft has officially announced a few updates to the Audio Conferencing (formally PSTN Conferencing) capabilities in Office 365 which have expanded conferencing scenarios for more Office 365 users and increased its availability to more Office 365 products.

These updates include:

  • Audio Conferencing is now Available in Microsoft Teams in Public Preview
  • Audio Conferencing pay-per-minute available starting October 1st
  • PSTN Conferencing & PSTN Consumption renamed to Audio Conferencing & Communications Credits

Audio Conferencing in Public Preview Microsoft Teams

Microsoft has expanded Audio Conferencing (formally PSTN Conferencing) to support Microsoft Teams meetings. Users who are enabled for enabled Audio Conferencing will automatically see dial-in instructions added to their Microsoft Teams meetings. The Audio Conferencing service in Office 365 can be enabled for any user of E1 or E3 with the add-on Audio Conferencing pay-per-minute offering (details below), a standalone Audio Conferencing subscription, or any user enabled with E5.

For more information on Microsoft Teams and Audio Conferencing, read the Meetings & Calling in Microsoft Teams support article and watch the Skype for Business Broadcast Series: Ep. 50 What's new with PSTN Conferencing.

Audio Conferencing Pay-Per-Minute available

As of 1st October Microsoft expanded the Audio Conferencing services to Volume Licensing customers with users assigned an Office 365 Enterprise E1 or E3 subscription. These users will be able to leverage Audio Conferencing in their scheduled meetings and customers will be billed on a per-minute basis for each inbound or outbound call placed by each attendee during a scheduled meeting. This option allows tenants to enable all or a subset of users with a built-in audio conferencing experience Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business meetings, without the E5 or the standalone Audio Conferencing subscription. Pay-per-minute rates vary for toll or toll-free call and by destination; it also requires Communications Credits to be enabled by tenant.

This offering can also be used in conjunction with this subscription offerings, for example you can have some users enabling Audio Conferencing pay-per-minute and some users enabled with a monthly subscription of E5. This enables more flexibility in pricing for customers who don't need all users on a subscription basis. For more information on Audio Conferencing rates, you can download rate tables by country, currency, and rate type for both the pay-per-minute and subscription offerings.

For more information on updates on Audio Conferencing, including other preview features, watch the Skype for Business Broadcast Series: Ep. 50 What's new with PSTN Conferencing and review Countries/regions that are supported for Audio Conferencing.


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