Domestic Calling plan with Dialout policy

by | Jul 21, 2020 | Microsoft teams, Skype for Business

  • This issue is applicable to US based users only.

When a user has domestic calling plan and a dialout policy with only domestic PSTN, the user will not be able to make calls to Canada or Puerto Rico. Calls to Canada and Puerto Rico are included for free with Domestic calling plan. Let’s review this article for domestic calling plan.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/country-and-region-availability-for-audio-conferencing-and-calling-plans/availability-in-the-united-states-u-s

Domestic calling plan (for E5, E3, M5) has following features for each user:

  • 3000 minutes for domestic call.
  • Includes all 50 states and Puerto Rico
  • Includes Canada

Calls to Canada with only domestic calling plan works as long as dial out policy is not applied or the policy allows international calls. The DialOutPolicy that blocks calls to Canada, are the ones that restricts PSTN calls to domestic only calls.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/outbound-calling-restriction-policies

Policies allowing only domestic calls:

  • DialoutCPCInternationalPSTNDomestic
  • DialoutCPCandPSTNDomestic
  • DialoutCPCDisabledPSTNDomestic
  • DialoutCPCZoneAPSTNDomestic

When you assign any of these policies to a user with domestic calling plan the user will not be able to make calls to Canada, even though calls to Canada are included in the domestic calling plan for free.

If your organization is adopting “Dialout Policy” to restrict calls then this is something to be aware of. Specially, if your users were already making business related calls to Canada using the domestic calling plan.

Why do I need to assign policy ?

You will need to assign policy is when you implement communication credit for users so that they can use “call me at” feature. By default communication credit will also allow users to make international calls, unless, you add a policy to restrict it.

How do I allow users to make calls to Canada and Puerto Rico with domestic calling plan ?

You have to allow the user to make international calls via dial out policy or specify no dial out policy. Even though calls to Canada are included in domestic calling plan, it is still considered international call by DialOut Policy.

For users who do not have communication credit license, and has only domestic calling plan, will be able make calls to Canada as it is allowed by the plan.

For users with communication credit license, and domestic calling plan, this gives them the ability to make any international calls.