Unified Communications Providers have been stuck with a weak signal for years. Many UC, VoIP providers built out services in the mid 2000s and then stopped innovating on services. Sure, a few things improved -- but when the major software vendors stopped innovating, adding new features, it became very difficult for UCaaS and SIP trunking providers to innovate beyond the features they can download.
But those legacy feature sets are definitely not the end of the story. Success within innovators is showing that enterprise customers are shopping aggressively for more, and better options. And so while some service providers are shrinking, others are growing - both in customers and profitability. Product manager, there's no reason you shouldn't be competitive; the market and the opportunities are hot:
- Tango Extend provides connectivity to mobile devices
- Alianza is rolling out new AI enabled features for voice service providers
- Intermedia offers advanced communications on a wholesale basis
- NetSapiens and PortaOne are offering many advanced features integrated into their platforms
- Cisco BroadWorks provides strong API integration points for growth
- EvolveIP is building focused AI communications for the hospitality industry
What are Enterprises and Businesses Looking For?
ECG analyzed features in the winning, growing service providers. We spoke to dozens of enterprises, vendors, white-label, and UCaaS service providers to identify what drives enterprise buyer decisions for Voice and communications services. And we organized them into the Five Bars framework described in this article.
The Five Bars framework emphasizes not just core voice functionality but also integrations with emerging technologies such as AI, analytics, and multi-channel communications. It reflects real-world trends observed in RFPs, RFIs, and successful deployments, where enterprises prioritize features that enhance collaboration, security, and efficiency.
Bar 1: Essential Voice – The Foundation of Connectivity
At the entry level, Bar 1 focuses on delivering reliable, basic telephony services that form the bedrock of any modern telecom offering. This bar ensures providers can support fundamental operations for calls involving telephone numbers, often replacing legacy systems while maintaining compliance and global reach.
Let's discuss the fundamental features at this level.
- UCaaS Hosted PBX - Basic business calling
- Over-the-top (OTT) Mobile App
- SIP Trunking
- Global Calling
- TDM Replacement Features
- Emergency Services with Manual Location Updates
UCaaS Hosted PBX
Basic Unified Communications as a Service includes Hosted PBX features, such as internal dialing with extensions, calling outbound and receiving calls, simple call routing, forwarding, caller name, voicemail, forwarding calls to mobile phones. These are the same BroadWorks and Metaswitch EAS features that have been available for about two decades.
Over-the-top (OTT) mobile app
Bar 1 service providers offer a mobile app, typically for iPhone, Android, and PC, which enables making and receiving calls. They depend on the data plan - so if you've got a weak cellular data area, then you probably don't want to use these apps to make calls.
SIP Trunking
Features to connect SIP to PBXs and legacy platforms are important here. The SIP trunking may be simple, without Disaster Recovery features.
Global Calling, including inbound
Simple inbound global calling is provided at this level, including the ability to acquire and use telephone numbers from locations outside the provider's country. This means, for example, a US company can have a telephone number in Canada or the UK. It's fundamental for allowing global businesses.
TDM (Time-Division Multiplexing) Replacement Features
As "Copper Shutdown" or "PSTN Turn Off" processes take places, One bar providers can help fill those gaps providing ISDN PRI, SS7 moved over to SIGTRAN, CAS/CAMA trunks, and POTS connectivity. These are often useful because customer equipment may not have SIP interfaces.
Emergency Services with manual location updates
All providers have to provide users the ability to call for emergency services, and they have to allow the user to specify the place from which they are calling. In the US, this is commonly called the "Emergency Routing Location," ERL. One-bar providers do not automatically detect where the person is, and cannot detect when they move to another floor of the building.
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Providers operating at this level typically cater to businesses transitioning from analog systems, such as those affected by PSTN switch-offs in regions like the U.K. Devices supported here include standard SIP phones (e.g., Poly, Yealink) and softphones. While sufficient for basic needs, remaining at Bar 1 risks obsolescence, as it mirrors services from a decade ago without addressing modern demands for integration and analytics.
Bar 2: Connected Business – Enhancing Basic Interactions
Building on essential voice, Bar 2 introduces features that foster connectivity and user convenience, transforming telephony into a more interactive tool. This level is accessible for providers to implement, often through third-party integrations, and appeals to businesses seeking efficiency without complex overhauls.
Core enhancements include:
- Usage and reporting analytics to track call patterns and performance.
- Business texting via SMS, RCS, or WhatsApp for seamless messaging.
- Customizable Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems for automated call routing.
- Voicemail-to-text transcription for quick review of messages.
- Nuisance calling prevention, such as spam detection and call blocking options.
- eSIM Integration
Analytics
Analytics dashboards give businesses a visible way to see patterns of calls, busy times, call durations, and employee activity. They may give basic Call Reporting functions to download a list of CDRs, but modern Analytics make it easy to visualize the calling activity of the business or of a working group.
Business Person-to-Person Messaging
Business messaging can take the form of SMS/MMS, WhatsApp, or RCS. It allows the telephone number on the business card to both interact with the business communication system for voice calls but also for messaging. The messaging platform will vary by location -- WhatsApp in Spain, Facebook Messenger in Philippines, Telegram in Kazakhstan, SMS in America. The goal is to allow the same communication methods that individuals use with one another to connect to their business vendors.
Customizable IVR and Call Routing
Enhanced dial trees, possibly with speech recognition, allow callers to reach the right user. No caller enjoys a dial tree but when done well they can be an efficient way for a business's main number to reach the right group.
Voicemail To Text transcription
Classic voicemail, found at 1 Bar, comes only in audio format. If you want to know what they meant, you have to listen to every single second of audio. But Voicemail transcription adds a major feature by allowing the message to be read. It improves efficiency, and allows voicemails to be understood even while the recipient is on another call or in a meeting.
Nuisance Calling Management
All countries have some number of nuisance calls hitting their end users. By detecting which calls are likely to be spam or unwanted, nuisance calling management can signal the user. The most minimal form of this is "SPAM LIKELY" on caller ID, while more advanced forms can send the nuisance call to voicemail, or potentially to a "voice captcha." Companies like TransUnion, TNS, Youmail provide components of this to larger providers, and TransNexus, Sansay to smaller providers.
eSIM Integration
The most interesting new feature found at 2 Bars is eSIM integration - the ability to connect the voice provider to a mobile device without an app, and making full use of the priority features that voice is afforded on the cellular networks. For example, when cellular service is weak, voice calls may work well, while data connection is heavily curtailed. eSIM extends a communications service provider beyond the range of limits of desk phones and mobile apps to the actual mobile devices that are necessary. Tango Extend is clearly the leader in North America and Europe for enabling UC providers to connect to mobile devices.
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At two bars, providers can differentiate through user-friendly dashboards that aggregate data. This level is particularly relevant for markets with high mobile penetration, where texting bridges fixed-line and mobile gaps. However, it stops short of deep integrations, so enterprises with advanced CRM or customer contact needs will need to shop for more advanced providers.
Bar 3: Connected Business – Advanced Integration and Control
Bar 3 elevates connectivity by incorporating enterprise-grade tools that enable customization and automation. Here, the focus shifts to empowering businesses with control over their communications ecosystem, often through APIs and AI-driven features.
Notable capabilities encompass:
- CRM integrations (e.g., with Salesforce or HubSpot) for syncing call data.
- Call control APIs for programmatic management of calls.
- Automatic emergency location updates using mobile detection or SIP registration monitoring.
- Automatic call recording with compliance features.
- API webhook support for real-time notifications to external systems.
- Outbound dialers for streamlined campaigns or follow-ups.
- TLS/SRTP encryption for secure signaling and media, supporting standards like HIPAA in healthcare.
CRM Integration
This means the voice system can connect to a customer relationship management system (like Salesforce, HubSpot, or ServiceNow) so that call metadata, recordings, dispositions, or click-to-call links are surfaced within the CRM, and ideally the CRM can drive call workflows (e.g. dialing from a contact, popping up records when call arrives). Integrations are not all created equal; on the simple side you have an app running on the PC of the CRM user which receives a signal about the call and opens a URL in the CRM web site. On the high end you have a strong synchronization of information in real time, processing of errors, and support for custom fields linking the communications information with the CRM.
Call Control APIs
These are REST, SIP, or WebSocket APIs that allow external software to control call behavior: initiating outbound calls, ending calls, transferring, putting on hold, whispering, conferencing, muting, DTMF injection, etc. At a minimum, UC providers may offer an API to launch a new call, and these can be very helpful. But more advanced APIs allow an enterprise to more fully integrate their operations with the voice service provider, potentially competing with Twilio, Bandwidth, Nexmo. These are the logical descendant of "Computer Telephony Integration" (CTI) systems, but applied in the UCaaS space.
Automatic Emergency Location Updates
Because VoIP users can roam (home, remote, etc.), there must be a mechanism to map a user’s physical (or network) location to a dispatchable address when making emergency (e.g. 911) calls. “Automatic updates” means the system detects a location change (via IP geography, network identifiers, WiFi BSSIDs, etc.) and updates the registered emergency location behind the scenes so first responders get a more accurate address. Regulatory laws like Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act in the U.S. impose requirements. If location is stale or unknown, the system often falls back to a default address or a manual prompt.
Call Recording
Recording provides the ability to capture and store the audio of calls. But variations abound: is every call recorded? How do you comply with GDPR or California laws? Where is the data stored? How long will it be stored? But offering call recording opens the door to certain regulated industries, such as financial services.
API with webhook support
Beyond control APIs, service providers at Bar 3 offer event-driven notifications (webhooks) for things like “call started”, “call ended”, “agent answered”, “call transferred”, etc. To use these, enterprise customers need a software team to run a service that the service provider can access over the Internet. This enables external systems (CRM, analytics, dashboards) to react in real time to voice events.
Outbound dialers
Outbound dialers can be used for evil, but fundamentally they're about organizing a series of calls from an agent. The simplest outbound dialers can simply allow a user of the UCaaS platform to manage calling through a long list of numbers. More advanced dialers may enable predictive dialing and pacing algorithms. Any 3-Bars service provider offering a dialer needs to know all about TCPA regulations.
Encryption (TLS/SRTP)
Encryption is a fundamental "table stakes" of enterprise voice communications. TLS (Transport Layer Security) or equivalents protects the signaling channel (SIP) so call setup messages aren’t viewed; this prevents attackers in ISPs or with access to some infrastructure from knowing who is calling and being called. SRTP (Secure Real-time Transport Protocol) protects the media (voice or video) payload in transit. Remember that “encryption in transit” is one thing; “encryption at rest” (for recordings) or in database fields is another. The fundamental technology is easy to deploy, but rolling out and managing certificates, supporting older devices, and meeting encryption compliance standards makes this a substantial engineering task.
Bar 4: Secured Collaboration – Fortifying Multi-Channel Engagement
As telecom services mature, Bar 4 emphasizes secure, collaborative environments that integrate voice with broader digital interactions. This bar addresses regulatory and risk management needs, making it ideal for industries like finance, healthcare, and government.
Key elements include:
- Secure payment processing (e.g., PCI-DSS compliant features for redacting card details).
- Multi-channel contact integration, combining voice, messaging (e.g., WhatsApp), email, and web tickets into a unified platform.
- No-code integrations with tools like Zapier for easy automation.
- Integrated, branded video meetings to keep users within the provider's ecosystem (avoiding third-party referrals like Zoom or Webex resales).
- Real-time call transcription for immediate insights.
- GDPR/HIPAA compliance tools for data sovereignty and privacy.
- Fraud risk and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) masking to detect and obscure sensitive data.
- Voice biometrics for caller verification in high-stakes scenarios.
Secure payment processing (PCI-DSS compliance, redaction of card details)
When customers read out credit card numbers over the phone, providers offering PCI-DSS compliant solutions can detect and block sensitive data from being recorded or logged. This often involves pausing call recordings during payment entry, using DTMF tone suppression so digits aren’t audible, or redirecting customers to secure IVR/payment portals. The goal is to keep cardholder data from ever touching the provider’s storage, logs, or users’ desktops.
Multi-channel contact integration (voice, messaging, email, web tickets)
Instead of agents juggling different platforms, multi-channel integration consolidates customer communication across calls, SMS, WhatsApp, web chat, email, and ticket systems into a single agent desktop. This lets a service rep see the full context of a customer interaction regardless of entry point.
Note that this feature is specifically related to contact center operations. But the distinction between typical UC users and contact center users seems to be shrinking rapidly.
No-code integrations (Zapier and similar automation)
A 3 Bar provider could provide an API and webhook support to allow a savvy enterprise to develop code to integrate. At 4 Bars, Rather than writing custom code, no-code integrations allow users to link the voice/contact platform with other SaaS tools (Google Sheets, Slack, CRMs) through connectors like Zapier. This is enabling workflow automation—trigger an action when a call ends, log it into a spreadsheet, or post into Slack. It lowers the barrier for operations teams that don’t have developers but introduces risk if APIs or connector logic is limited or breaks with vendor updates.
Integrated, branded video meetings
Some providers embed their own video meeting capabilities directly inside the UCaaS or contact-center system instead of relying on Zoom/Webex/Teams. This keeps branding consistent, avoids redirecting customers to external platforms, and lets the provider maintain control over data paths, recordings, and user experience. It also reduces dependency on competing vendors, but requires the provider to maintain infrastructure with low latency and reliability comparable to established video conferencing players. Microsoft Teams is the king of integrating a video meeting experience with a voice calling service in MS Teams Phones. Many of the major Communications Service Providers offer a voice and video meeting experience without reselling a competitor's offering.
One vendor providing in this space is Oculum, who provides licensed software that can be integrated into UCaaS platforms.
GDPR/HIPAA compliance tools (data sovereignty and privacy)
Providers serving security-sensitive, European or healthcare markets need mechanisms to ensure customer data stays within jurisdictional boundaries and meets privacy regulations. This includes tools for selective data deletion, audit logs, consent capture, and encryption policies. For HIPAA, providers typically need Business Associate Agreements (BAAs), while GDPR requires demonstrable controls over data portability, erasure, and lawful processing. In practice, compliance depends not only on technical features but also on contractual and procedural enforcement.
Fraud risk and PII masking (detect and obscure sensitive data)
These systems scan call audio and text for personally identifiable information (names, SSNs, addresses) or fraud markers; most commonly this is done in recordings, but newer systems are focusing on real time processing of live data. Alianza has discussed a product of this kind, and Verint offers fundamental technology for it. DialPad provides this in live interactions, and Ring Central in recordings. This helps protect customer privacy, reduces exposure if data is leaked, and supports regulatory audits.
Voice biometrics for caller verification
Instead of relying only on PINs or security questions, voice biometric systems analyze a caller’s unique vocal characteristics (pitch, tone, rhythm) to verify identity. In contact centers, this can shorten authentication steps while reducing fraud. Accuracy is influenced by background noise, illness (affecting voice), and spoofing attempts (recorded/replayed voices or synthetic speech). Strong implementations combine biometrics with other signals (device fingerprinting, call history) to avoid over-reliance on one factor. Pindrop, Nuance, and Verint are three major providers of this technology.
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At 4 Bars, Secured Collaboration requires robust portals that mask underlying complexities, ensuring a seamless user experience. These providers must beware the Frankensteins-monster effect created by asking users to login to different portals to access different functions. A unified portal and app experience are key to create a useable experience that users will actually use.
Bar 5: Accelerated Productivity – AI-Driven Optimization
The pinnacle of the framework, Bar 5 leverages AI to harness the power of the voice channel for productivity. This level is forward-looking, incorporating emerging technologies to extract actionable insights from voice data.
Advanced features comprise:
- Real-Time Call Transcription
- AI Enabled Voice Auto Attendant
- Branded calling with logo display for enhanced trust
- Live guidance for customer service agents based on real-time conversation analysis
- Keyword and topic detection to categorize discussions
- Action item extraction to generate to-do lists from calls
- Sentiment analysis to gauge customer emotions
- AI-generated call summaries for quick recaps
Real-time Call Transcription for immediate insights
This feature converts live audio into text as the conversation happens. The real power of this is in providing it to "ordinary people" - not just call center agents - to see their call as it happens, copy and paste, and interact with the transcript of the call. Of course, when used in a contact center environment, the real time transcription feeds numerous other uses, such as sentiment analysis.
Real-Time Transcription is sometimes found today in the meetings space, but even there it's available to a select few. Platforms like Google Gemini and Microsoft Teams generally do not prioritize access to live transcription.
AI-Enabled Voice Auto Attendant
An AI-enabled voice auto attendant surpasses a traditional phone menu by recognizing the caller's natural language, allowing for conversational interaction with callers. Instead of pressing numbers on a keypad, or saying code words like "billing," callers can simply state their intent—such as “I need technical support” or "I need to update the MAC address on my cable modem" or “I want to dispute the most recent charge on my credit card”—and the system routes them intelligently.
Unfortunately, poor initial implementations of this have trained many callers to avoid these systems, but modern LLMs have much stronger capabilities. The best systems will interact with the caller naturally and then pass on the information appropriately, or potentially interact with databases or enterprise business logic.
Branded calling with logo display for enhanced trust
The Branded Calling Ecosystem (BCID) lets enterprises display their verified name, logo, and even call reason on the recipient’s device, replacing generic caller ID with trusted information. For US service providers, BCID replaces or supplements some of the carrier-specific options historically offered by Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. This reduces call avoidance and improves answer rates, especially for industries like banking, healthcare, and delivery. Implementation often requires coordination with carriers or vendors supporting Rich Call Data (RCD) within STIR/SHAKEN, and display depends on handset/OS support. Providers like Numeracle are leading the charge to enable Voice service providers to offer this service.
Live guidance for agents and all professionals
By running live speech-to-text transcription alongside natural language processing models, platforms can provide in-the-moment recommendations to agents. This could mean compliance alerts (“don’t promise refunds over $X”), coaching prompts (“mention product Y”), or context-based knowledge suggestions. Effective systems balance latency and accuracy, since even a few seconds of delay can undermine usefulness. Integration with agent desktops is also critical—guidance must be unobtrusive and actionable, not a distraction.
But the power of this should not be limited to what you think of as "contact center agents." Most organizations have a rich database of knowledge, even if it is distributed to in a million Teams messages and training manuals. I foresee this capability of real time transcription integrated with generative models accessing privately-trained models having a substantial benefit for the productivity and access to information for ordinary workers.
Keyword and topic detection to categorize discussions
Keyword spotting and topic modeling let providers automatically tag calls with themes like “billing,” “cancellation,” or “technical support.” This reduces manual categorization, speeds analytics, and enables routing insights. Modern approaches use embeddings and clustering rather than fixed keyword lists, giving more flexibility across languages and phrasing.
Action item extraction to generate to-do lists from calls
Large Language Models (LLMs) can detect commitments and next steps expressed in conversations, such as “I’ll send the contract tomorrow” or “Please reset the password.” These should then be synchronized as structured action items for agents or CRM workflows. For UC providers, embedding this feature helps customers close loops more efficiently and reduces the risk of promises being forgotten. Reliability hinges on both high-quality transcription and models tuned to business contexts, since casual phrases may otherwise be misinterpreted.
Sentiment analysis to gauge customer emotions
Sentiment analysis scans conversations for indicators of customer satisfaction, frustration, or confusion. In real time, it allows supervisors to intervene on distressed calls; historically, it supports customer journey analytics. Models can analyze tone, pitch, and language, but sentiment detection is inherently noisy, especially across cultures and dialects.
AI-generated call summaries for quick recaps
After calls complete, AI models can generate concise summaries highlighting key issues, resolutions, and follow-ups. The goal is to provide this capability to every caller on every call in a format they can use.
At Bar 5, providers must prioritize data sovereignty, often through on-premises or controlled cloud solutions for transcription and AI processing. This enables compliance while unlocking value from historically underutilized voice data. ECG, for instance, is developing tools in this area to fill market gaps for sovereign AI transcription.
How many bars do you have?
The Five Bars framework isn't intended to predict the future: it's intended to describe how service providers are already succeeding today. Where service providers have a strong foundation and advanced features from bars four and five, they're growing in profit and user count. Where they have self-limited to bars one or two, they see stagnation and decline.
Telecom success hinges on progression beyond basic voice. Providers stuck at lower bars risk losing market share to innovators like Microsoft Teams, RingCentral and Zoom, which dominate through integrated, AI-enhanced ecosystems. To advance, focus on software development, partnerships, and customer-centric portals that unify disparate features.
For global operators, regional nuances—such as U.K. PSTN migrations or U.S. STIR/SHAKEN fraud protocols—must inform strategies. Customers in countries with high quality Internet bandwidth can purchase communications services much more freely than those in countries with limited infrastructure and frequent Internet slowdowns.
Business communications of the future isn't reserved for the biggest players, willing to splash billions on customer acquisition. Communications has always been a business that rewards smaller providers who connect well with individual industries. The Five Bars framework shows that growth and competitiveness come from advancing beyond basic telephony, embracing secure collaboration, and harnessing AI for real productivity. Every provider has a choice: stay stuck with yesterday’s features and fade into irrelevance, or raise the bar and lead the way into the next generation of enterprise communications. At ECG, we believe the path forward is clear—and it’s wide open for those ready to take hold.
