Beatriz Ruiperez 
Thomas Cazacu, VP Public Sector at Toku has been a part of the company right from the beginning. Read his thoughts on what it takes to grow from a lean team of seven to a leading cloud communications provider in APAC celebrating its 4 year anniversary.
It’s 2022 and more IT leaders are opting to migrate their business telephony to the cloud using a soft phone system like Zoom Phone, as part of their digital transformation efforts.
We all know Zoom, but what is Zoom Phone?
Zoom Phone is a flexible cloud-based business VoIP phone system developed by teleconferencing provider Zoom. In other words, it is a cloud phone – also commonly known as soft-phone. With just one app, users can make calls from personal computers, desk phones, Zoom Rooms, and cell phones from one app.
Why is Zoom Phone so popular?
Because cloud phone systems unlike traditional on-premise telephone systems come with a host of benefits for any enterprise, including access to the most up-to-date features, better support for remote and hybrid teams, ability to quickly scale according to business needs, and help reduce the total cost of ownership of your communications platform.
There’s just one issue: any cloud phone system – including Zoom Phone – still needs a PSTN network if the business wants to make phone calls externally.
It gets more complicated if the company has operations in different countries. For IT leaders, being able to pick the right telephony providers in order to provision numbers for all the countries becomes a messy, frustrating challenge.
Getting Toku for Zoom Phone by Bringing Your Own Carrier (BYOC)
This is exactly where Toku for Zoom Phone comes to the rescue.
The idea is simple. Let’s say you are a business looking to use Zoom Phone for business communications. To plug in Toku as your carrier, all you have to do is search for our listing on Zoom Phone Provider Exchange.
This is the beauty of the Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) model.
BYOC is flexible, and allows businesses to explore cloud communications while keeping the telephony capabilities that they’ve been using all this while – like their existing numbers and carriers – or pick a new carrier if they want. By allowing IT leaders to plug in a carrier of their choice for SIP trunking as they migrate their telephony to the cloud, Zoom Phone’s BYOC program (also known as their Cloud Peering Partner Program) allows enterprises to gain more control over their telephony.
How does Toku for Zoom Phone benefit your enterprise?
With Toku for Zoom Phone, you can really have more control over your telephony, which offers several attractive business benefits.
Get monthly nuggets of wisdom for all things customer experience in your inbox
Let’s cover them in detail.
1. Better call quality
Toku is renowned for its excellent connectivity in APAC thanks to its tier-1 network that gives higher call quality with lower latency. In our experience working with multiple enterprises in APAC, once they switch to Toku, their call quality improves so dramatically that they can truly take advantage of remote collaborative working with superb cloud VoIP connection quality.
2. Improve compliance with local telco regulators
Compliance is one of the key reasons more IT leaders choose the BYOC path over traditional telephony models. These days, several APAC countries have reinforced their telco regulations and made them more strict particularly where data protection is concerned. In these cases, being able to choose your own carrier means a business is more empowered to pick the right provider that is compliant and meets with local regulations around telcos.
With several years of experience navigating complex telco regulations in APAC under our belt, Toku is frequently the go-to carrier for enterprises seeking a cloud peering service provider on Zoom Phone’s Provider Exchange.
3. Consolidate telco providers
Compared to regions like Europe and North America, the Asia Pacific region is relatively fragmented in terms of telecom connectivity. For enterprises looking to expand communications rapidly, for example, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, or Taiwan, a constant challenge is dealing with several telco service providers – each with their own terms and conditions, and invoicing minutiae.
Because Toku has established a strong Tier-1 network in the region, with PSTN replacement capabilities in 15 countries, we are an ideal option for businesses seeking to consolidate their telco service operators. An enterprise can quickly scale Zoom Phone calls for multiple countries in APAC using a single BYOC connection with Toku as their carrier.
4. Pay as you go to lower costs
Opting for Toku as your cloud peering carrier in your Zoom Phone setup gives you instant access to more competitive calling rates, and importantly, special types of telephone numbers including APAC numbers and toll-free numbers. This is because Toku offers very flexible pricing plans so that enterprises can add more users as they need in a pay-as-you-go approach.
5. 24/7 dedicated support
Our consultancy approach means that you get dedicated support to build the perfect Zoom Phone setup for your business. You’ll also get 24/7 regional support, for both your platform and your network so that you can focus on scaling your APAC operations with more peace of mind.
Ready to connect to the world using Toku for Zoom Phone?
When it comes to pairing the BYOC model with a local carrier, Toku is the clear choice for businesses with operations in APAC. If you are an existing Zoom Phone customer looking to enjoy Toku’s connectivity, here is how you get started:
- Find Toku as a provider in the Zoom Phone admin portal
- Connect to Toku as your provider from the admin portal
- Authorise us as your provider to upload your numbers
- Provision your numbers
Thomas Cazacu 
Ana Castrillon