This announcement will surprise many. According to information from the new online media the InformedMicrosoft became a telecom operator following an authorization given by the Electronic Communications Regulatory Authority (Arcep) last September.
A new Microsoft offer dedicated to companies
Concretely, this concerns the collaborative communication application Teams whose users will now be able to benefit from telephone numbers. According to our colleagues, they will therefore be able to make or receive calls from any fixed or mobile line.
This news is anything but trivial, because it is clearly possible to see companies opting for a centralization of their exchanges on the solution deployed by Microsoft. What to do very badly to the competition and in particular to the French Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom who also deploy offers dedicated to professionals.
Anyway, Microsoft was able to convince the French administrative authority. As our colleagues from BFM, it is indeed necessary to meet certain specific conditions to benefit from the status of telecom operator in France. It is therefore necessary to take charge of emergency numbers, data storage, but also the sharing of information or the interception of communications with the judicial authorities in the context of investigations.
From now on, the Redmond company intends to move up a gear, since it will deploy on a global scale in the telecom sector via its Teams Phone offer currently in the test phase in the United States. Its customers will therefore benefit from a telephone number and take an additional step in terms of communication.
A six-year-old case
It is worth remembering that the question of whether Microsoft is a telecom operator goes back several years already. On lemon squeezerwe spoke to you about this issue in 2016. It was then a question of Skype messaging, which allows its users to make national and international calls or send SMS.
We also anticipate the fact that Microsoft could take the lead by focusing on its Enterprise offer. Moreover, the Tech giant had confirmed that it had filed a request with Arcep this year concerning its service dedicated to Skype for Business professionals. There was already no question at the time of extending it to the general public.
Finally, we gave information that was astounding to say the least: in November 2016, France had more than 2,000 telecom operators. And for good reason, it is not necessary to have a mobile network to obtain this status, but the fact of exploiting it is sufficient.