In highly regulated markets, communication service providers (CSPs) face a serious challenge: enabling Microsoft Teams telephony while meeting strict compliance requirements, especially for emergency calling. Whether you're serving enterprise customers across the U.S., Europe, or globally, ensuring precise location reporting and emergency call routing is more than a best practice, it's the law.
Direct Routing has emerged as a powerful solution, giving providers the flexibility to integrate Microsoft Teams with PSTN services while maintaining full control over routing policies, location data, and compliance mechanisms.
"It's down to that level of detail, which office block you're on, which floor," explains Akshay John, Head of Engineering at Dstny Global Services. "Microsoft makes that possible when configuring users within the tenant."
Why Compliance is Critical — and Complex
In the U.S., mandates like the RAY BAUM’s Act, which require dispatchable location information (e.g., building, floor, room) to be automatically transmitted with 911 calls, impose strict obligations on enterprises and service providers.
Europe has similar mandates under the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), requiring access to emergency services with accurate location information.
This includes both network-based and handset-derived location data.
Regulations can also vary by country, for instance, in Germany, France, and Sweden, emergency calls are routed based on the caller's registered address stored in a national Emergency Database (EDB).
This necessitates that organizations maintain up-to-date location information for their users to ensure compliance and effective emergency response.
Akshay highlights the implications, "One of the key requirements for any service provider offering numbers is that they can make and receive emergency calls to that number. The same applies for Direct Routing, and the U.S. is particularly sensitive to this."
How Direct Routing Supports Compliance
With Direct Routing, CSPs can configure emergency calling behavior within Microsoft Teams while using their own infrastructure and numbering plans. This flexibility is essential in global or multi-region deployments.
"We had to build in a special capability where we can route those emergency calls directly over to the emergency response provider," says John. "Especially for those providers whose downstream equipment is not able to handle this extra information coming in from Microsoft."
This ensures critical information isn't dropped — a key compliance and safety concern.
Handling the Technical Complexity
Emergency calling via Teams involves multiple technical layers:
- Defining Emergency Locations in Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
- Mapping Network Topologies to user locations — including Wi-Fi access points or subnet IDs.
- Assigning Emergency Policies — which determine how and where calls are routed.
These configurations ensure accurate location detection and proper routing to local Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs).
