Video conferencing giant Zoom is expanding its cloud-based enterprise telephony service in India. The company announced on Wednesday, June 11, that Zoom Phone will now be available in four additional licenced service areas across the country, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and the Delhi-NCR region (Delhi, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida, and Gurugram). Zoom Phone was already approved by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to operate in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. After Wednesday’s announcement, the service is now available in a total of six telecom circles in India. It not only strengthens Zoom’s foothold in India but also signals a broader shift in how enterprise communication is evolving towards cloud-based telephony solutions offered by a growing class of unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) providers. Paid users of Zoom have access to Zoom Phone as an add-on. The company further said it has plans to bring Zoom Phone to additional areas in the future. It is offering clients Zoom Phone as a full-stack solution comprising integrations with an omnichannel Contact Center platform, Zoom Workplace, and Zoom AI Companion for post-call summaries, voicemail task extraction, and voicemail prioritisation. Customers located in regions where Zoom Phone is not yet available might still be able to access the service by visiting the company’s self-service web portal and acquiring native phone numbers based on specific telecom circles, such as Karnataka, Delhi-NCR, and Mumbai, as per the company. This is largely possible as inbound and outbound calling via Zoom Phone takes place over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), making it a viable replacement for traditional private branch exchange (PBX) systems. Zoom Phone is essentially a PBX system that is hosted on the cloud. While customers may not need equipment on-premises to route calls internally, they will still need a private number which means that it is not a replacement of SIM. "If you look at the Indian telephony scenario, it's very regulated. If you’re having an IP (internet protocol) telephony, you cannot make a PSTN call from that. We have a lot of regulations compared to the US and rightfully so. But that gives a very poor experience to the customers. You have your mobile phone, your laptop or desktop and then you have your desk phone. What if you could bring everything together and handle work calls irrespective of what device you are using. That is the Zoom Phone," Sameer Raje, general manager and head of India & SAARC region at Zoom, said at a briefing in New Delhi on Wednesday. Zoom brings Contact Center to India In addition to expanding access to Zoom Phone, the company has introduced a new offering called Contact Center. It is a product that enables customers to reach out to Zoom’s enterprise clients through a wide range of channels, including voice, video, virtual agents, social media, email, and messaging apps. “Zoom Contact Center utilizes the Zoom data centers in India to handle its services, supporting customer expectations and compliance requirements, particularly in sectors such as government, healthcare, and financial services,” the company said. For a more unified experience, the company allows its enterprise clients to integrate Zoom Phone with Contact Center. This would enable a customer care agent to transfer, forward, and record calls within the same environment. The agent would also have access via Contact Center to Zoom Phone user details such as extensions, Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers, and usernames in order to identify inbound calls and route them accordingly. However, Zoom Contact Center also has Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) capabilities, allowing businesses to continue using their existing telecom service providers within its contact center solution instead of switching to Zoom Phone. “This gives companies more flexibility and control over their telephony infrastructure and offers a clear, manageable migration path from legacy on-premises PBX systems to the cloud,” the company said. Contact Center further has the ability to calculate customer satisfaction scores and undertake sentiment analysis. “Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center are purpose-built to work seamlessly together to empower organizations to deliver unified communications and superior customer and employee engagement. With this launch, we are excited to help businesses streamline collaboration, support flexible workforces, and enhance employee and customer experiences," Raje said. “This expansion also reflects the growing traction Zoom Phone is receiving, especially from multinational companies, as businesses in India move away from legacy PBX systems toward more flexible, AI-first collaboration solutions that enhance employee productivity,” said Velchamy Sankarlingam, president of Product and Engineering, Zoom.
