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Prepare to deploy Azure Communications Gateway

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This article guides you through each of the tasks you need to complete before you can start to deploy Azure Communications Gateway. In order to be successfully deployed, the Azure Communications Gateway has dependencies on the state of your Operator Connect or Teams Phone Mobile environments.

The following sections describe the information you need to collect and the decisions you need to make prior to deploying Azure Communications Gateway.

Prerequisites

Important

You must be a telecommunications operator or service provider to use Azure Communications Gateway.

For Operator Connect or Teams Phone Mobile, you must also have signed an Operator Connect or Teams Phone Mobile agreement with Microsoft. For more information on these programs, see Operator Connect or Teams Phone Mobile.

For Zoom Phone Cloud Peering, you must also have started the onboarding process with Zoom to become a Zoom Phone Cloud Peering provider. For more information on Cloud Peering, see Zoom's Cloud Peering information.

Important

You must fully understand the onboarding process for your chosen communications service and any dependencies introduced by the onboarding process.

Allow sufficient elapsed time for the deployment and onboarding process. For example, you might need wait up to two weeks for a new Azure Communications Gateway resource to be provisioned before you can connect it to your network.

You must own globally routable numbers for two types of testing:

  • Integration testing by your staff during deployment and integration
  • Service verification (continuous call testing) by your chosen communication services

The following table describes how many numbers you need to allocate.

Service Numbers for integration testing Service verification numbers
Operator Connect 1 (minimum) 6
Teams Phone Mobile 1 (minimum) 6
Microsoft Teams Direct Routing 1 (minimum) None (not applicable)
Zoom Phone Cloud Peering 1 (minimum) - 6 (US and Canada)
- 2 (rest of world)

Important

Service verification numbers must be usable throughout the lifetime of your deployment.

Arrange onboarding

You need a Microsoft onboarding team to deploy Azure Communications Gateway. Azure Communications Gateway includes an onboarding program called Included Benefits. If you're not eligible for Included Benefits or you require more support, discuss your requirements with your Microsoft sales representative.

The Operator Connect and Teams Phone Mobile programs also require an onboarding partner who manages the necessary changes to the Operator Connect or Teams Phone Mobile environments and coordinates with Microsoft Teams on your behalf. The Azure Communications Gateway Included Benefits project team fulfills this role, but you can choose a different onboarding partner to coordinate with Microsoft Teams on your behalf.

Ensure you have a suitable support plan

We strongly recommend that you have a support plan that includes technical support, such as Microsoft Unified Support or Premier Support.

Choose the Azure tenant to use

We recommend that you use an existing Microsoft Entra tenant for Azure Communications Gateway, because using an existing tenant uses your existing identities for fully integrated authentication. If you need to manage identities separately from the rest of your organization, create a new dedicated tenant first.

The Operator Connect and Teams Phone Mobile environments inherit identities and configuration permissions from your Microsoft Entra tenant through a Microsoft application called Project Synergy. You must add this application to your Microsoft Entra tenant as part of Connect Azure Communications Gateway to Operator Connect or Teams Phone Mobile (if your tenant does not already contain this application).

Get access to Azure Communications Gateway for your Azure subscription

Access to Azure Communications Gateway is restricted. When you've completed the previous steps in this article, contact your onboarding team and ask them to enable your subscription. If you don't already have an onboarding team, contact azcog-enablement@microsoft.com with your Azure subscription ID and contact details.

Wait for confirmation that Azure Communications Gateway is enabled before moving on to the next step.

Create a network design

Decide how Azure Communications Gateway should connect to your network. You must choose:

  • The type of connection you want to use (for example, MAPS Voice (recommended) or ExpressRoute).
  • The form of domain names Azure Communications Gateway uses towards your network: an autogenerated *.commsgw.azure.com domain name or a subdomain of a domain you already own (using domain delegation with Azure DNS).

For more information about your options, see Connectivity for Azure Communications Gateway.

For Teams Phone Mobile, you must decide how your network should determine whether a call involves a Teams Phone Mobile subscriber and therefore route the call to Microsoft Phone System. You can:

  • Use Azure Communications Gateway's integrated Mobile Control Point (MCP).
  • Connect to an on-premises version of Mobile Control Point (MCP) from Metaswitch.
  • Use other routing capabilities in your core network.

For more information on these options, see Call control integration for Teams Phone Mobile and Mobile Control Point in Azure Communications Gateway.

If you plan to route emergency calls through Azure Communications Gateway, read about emergency calling with your chosen communications service:

Configure MAPS Voice or ExpressRoute

Connect your network to Azure:

Next step

Deploy an Azure Communications Gateway resource and connect it to your networks