January 8, 2024
The evolution of business mobile communications reached significant milestones in 2023, bringing new levels of simplicity and flexibility to company communications.
In particular, app-less Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) business mobile communications are becoming the norm as new eSIM technology makes it possible to embed a secure business line in employees’ personal phones.
Let’s take a look at key developments and milestones in 2023 that will shape the trends ahead in 2024.
The ‘Mobile Only’ Tipping Point
Research released in November by the Cavell Group showed 99% of IT managers are ready to retire landline phones in favor of BYOD mobile phones, if provisioned with a company-controlled eSIMs and business line.
The survey commissioned by us showed that 96% of IT managers view supporting frontline workers with mobile solutions as an important driver for the move to embrace “Mobile Only” communications.
Concerns around security, communication of confidential information on uncontrolled devices, and lack of compliance controls are commonly identified challenges with adoption of BYOD for company communications. But 56% of surveyed employees in frontline healthcare positions said they’re already using their personal phones for business.
The move to remote working and hybrid working and the need to arm more deskless workers with business communications are making the change more imperative. And employees are very receptive too. Over 83% of the workers surveyed indicated they are willing to allow an employer to provide a company-controlled business eSIM on their personal phones. Some of this enthusiasm is fuelled by the fact that they don’t want to carry two phones around, or want to avoid the hassle of expense management for business use.
Tango Extend is the industry’s first solution using such eSIM technology to do this, allowing users to utilize their native phone dialers for business calling and communicate using personal and business identities simply and easily via the native dialer.
All signs indicate that the era of “Mobile Only” business communications is dawning.
A New Generation of Mobile Collaboration Communications
In June we announced that our Tango Extend solution permits mobile phones to be an extension of a Microsoft Teams enabled fixed line phone number from certified operators.
Gartner’s UCaaS Magic Quadrant 2023, which displays the UCaaS market leaders, listed Microsoft as leading the way with its “colossal Teams offering.” 
Microsoft Teams’ phone features are a big part of the reason why. “The platform’s telephony capabilities have garnered widespread approval, aligning with evolving user preferences that prioritize collaboration over traditional telephony,” Gartner wrote.
Our Extend solution promises to make Teams implementations even more powerful. Personal phones become fully featured secure extensions of a Teams implementation without any special apps or configuration or new licenses.
Extend uses eSIM technology to allow Teams users to make and receive Teams calls through the native dialer on their mobile phones using their existing Teams number. It’s just like carrying a desk phone Teams extension everywhere the worker goes.
Customers receiving calls from engineers or delivery staff are not confused by a call from a personal number. They know immediately that their supplier is calling them. If the user has other Teams endpoints too, such as desk phones and Teams soft clients, these will ring simultaneously with the mobile device, offering complete choice of which device to answer the call on.
The 'Forgotten Frontline'
Both the move to “Mobile Only” communications above and the embrace of collaboration solutions like Teams are closely related to the need to provide frontline workers with better communications.
The frontline workforce is estimated to consist of nearly 2 billion people worldwide, and often these workers do not have access to corporate communications platforms.
In 2023 we enhanced the focus on the forgotten frontline with a new Trend Advisor – “Engaging Frontline Workers With Effective Mobile Unified Communications: 30 Use Cases”. Our analysis gave detailed examples of how the jobs of these employees can be transformed by a business eSIM.
Calls and texts with the business eSIM use the business identity and numbers, ensuring communications with clients or partners are recognized and answered. The business has more administrative control over the communications, ensuring communications are handled appropriately and even recorded when required.
This becomes transformative for frontline workers in any industry, whose jobs are made easier by streamlined and efficient mobile communications. The Trend Advisor covers field service workers, utility workers, delivery drivers, sales and customer relationship management, home services and repair people – even those in mobile beauty and wellness services – who need to interact remotely and professionally with customers, colleagues and suppliers.
When these workers can use business unified communications natively on their mobile phones, their companies gain multiple operational benefits. Companies can cut landlines and desk phones and company-paid mobile phones. That in turn shrinks a company’s carbon footprint while improving worker reachability and productivity with more flexible and timely communications.
The business eSIM provided by our Tango Extend solution is the result of Tango Networks’ extensive innovation in fixed mobile convergence technologies, which are now covered by over 100 patents.