Summary Bullets:

• While IP voice is less ubiquitous, when it matters it, it really matters

• Agent-to-agent communication adds a new paradigm to IP voice services

Calling IP voice a legacy service is a little unfair, but only a little. Innovation in this arena is still happening as can be seen by BT’s recent launch of its automated UC edge platform designed to help enterprises move numbers between UC platforms automatically. However, a recent and stark counterpoint to this is Lumen’s decision to exit the IP voice market.

Lumen’s decision is based on multiple reasons. The provider is focusing on what it sees as its core value proposition, which is its network services capability. Further, after a period of selling-off much of its global infrastructure, the acquisition of Alkira has broadened the provider’s horizons again and it now intends to be a provider of global AI-networking solutions. Lumen felt that IP voice was not something it could offer as a global proposition and so decided to exit the market. While Lumen may have had broader strategic reasons for exiting, there is no doubt that if Lumen had seen IP voice as a high value, high growth opportunity then it would have acted differently.

Lumen is somewhat of an outlier, however, and many providers are, if not bullish, then at least moderately optimistic about the future of voice services. For example, BT International has made international IP voice one of its core service offerings and will continue to invest in it. BT reports that IP voice has been one of its biggest success stories in winning new logos. AT&T is also doubling down on voice, albeit with a focus that, while still possessing a global aspect, is America-centric.

What is powering this optimism when many enterprises have already taken IP voice services away from many of their workers in favor of mobile voice and video conferencing solutions? One part of the answer lies in customer contact services. Contact centers are viewed by many providers as a key growth market and voice is a key part of this. It is easy to assume that the growing use of AI is eroding the voice component of contact centers, but this is not necessarily the case. AI chatbots have automated many simple processes such as order tracking, password resets, and similar. However, extending AI into more complex and regulated environments is less easy. The token cost of agentic AI also makes the cost benefits less certain.

As AI continues to improve the cost comparison will change, but there is also the customer preference aspect that should be taken into account. Many customers continue to prefer talking to a human rather than engaging with AI. This is true among the younger generations as much as older generations. There is also the fact that where humans most want to speak to another human is in the most important interactions – when there has been a problem, or selling high value services or situations where customer retention and revenue generation are at stake. While there may be fewer calls into contact centers, when they happen, they matter – and their importance is creating greater interest in high quality voice services.

The emerging factor keeping service providers interested in IP voice is also centered around AI. In particular, it is calls that will be generated by agentic AI agents – either calling humans, or interacting with other agentic agents. As businesses and individuals begin to deploy more agentic AI agents they will need to communicate and it is not yet clear how this will happen. Some of it will be via APIs and MCPs, but not all systems will be connected, and agent-to-human-scenarios will always require either voice or text.

So, while AI is a clear threat to IP voice growth, it is also the potential savior of this oft-maligned but still hugely important technology.

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Summary Bullets:

• New features from Zoom reinforce its recently reconstituted platform vision, extend its ongoing transformation, and support an important, contemporary trend in the team collaboration space.

• This latest batch of improvements underscores Zoom’s place among the top team collaboration and contact center vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Google.

Earlier this month, Zoom held the latest installment of an ongoing series of customer webinars highlighting new platform features. In keeping with tradition at Zoom, the enhancements were wide-ranging, covering various tracts of its platform.

Here is a sample: the capabilities of ZoomMate, Zoom’s agentic AI assistant built into Zoom Workplace, have been expanded through several partner integrations. Users can incorporate AI models such as Anthropic; leverage connections with third-party apps including Dropbox, Canva, Zendesk, Box, Microsoft Teams, and others; and take advantage of an expanded set of tools and capabilities available in Claude and OpenAI. Aside from partner integrations, ZoomMate now supports more languages, an important move as Zoom attempts to grow its share-of-wallet outside the US. In addition to ZoomMate improvements, Zoom Contact Center now features a redesigned agent workspace that makes it easier to access a customer’s profile and history, handle live customer interactions, and pin commonly used business tools such as CRM for easy access.

The new features further Zoom’s vision for offering a ‘system of action,’ the heart of which involves using AI to convert siloed content into finished deliverables that enable users to move work forward with reduced effort. A key source of content is conversations held in meetings, chats, calls, and live discussions. The system of action is more complex than it sounds on the surface, involving three layers and additional components: a memory layer that stores information from meetings, chats, and the like; a federated AI layer that mixes AI models from Zoom and partners such as OpenAI; an orchestration layer – along with ZoomMate – which connects Zoom to third-party tools; and Zoom AI canvases (AI Docs, AI Sheets, and AI Slides) where finished deliverables are born.

Considered in their entirety, Zoom’s new capabilities extend a dramatic transformation that has been taking place at the company over recent years. Zoom ignited a corporate renaissance with the October 2023 introduction of Zoom AI Companion, a digital assistant that leverages GenAI to extend everyday capabilities such as generating action items and meeting summaries. In 2024, Zoom AI Companion 2.0 was introduced, which surfaces information across the Zoom platform. Zoom AI Companion 3.0, launched in November 2025, brings agentic AI capabilities that work across the Zoom platform as well as compatible third-party integrations. In June 2026, ZoomMate was introduced as an upgraded version of Zoom AI Companion 3.0. This latest round of announcements continues the focus on broadening Zoom’s platform, making it poised to further its transformation.

The new features also reflect a trend in the team collaboration space. Specifically, AI is moving from use in silos to being leveraged on a far grander scale – across vendor platforms, connecting parts of organizations, and linking organizations with external partners, suppliers, and the like. AI is increasingly serving as connective tissue, threading sections of vendors’ platforms such as meetings, chat, and calling; establishing links between those platforms and third-party applications used in various parts of the business, such as Salesforce; and integrating platforms from different vendors making things possible, such as joining a Zoom meeting with an external partner from a Cisco device.

Zoom has earned a place in the discussion of the top team collaboration and contact center vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Google. This latest batch of platform improvements underscores that position. The stage has been set for Zoom to achieve further accolades.

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Summary Bullets:

• Conversational AI is driving a major voice resurgence in customer service by improving the IP voice experience.

• Long call queues on account of human agents being thinly stretched across large call volumes have led to customer frustrations and poor CX, but modern versions of conversational AI are set to change that by taking away the frictions associated with voice.

It was believed that voice would diminish in value as digital channels started to emerge as an alternative to the voice channel. While messaging and chatbots offer cost and scale advantages, GlobalData’s research shows that voice continues to remain a vital channel for connecting with customers despite the frictions. Voice provides instant gratification and tends to be more straightforward to use as it does not involve navigating through messaging channels, websites and so and having to type messages. While the elderly demography tends to prefer voice due to greater familiarity, voice is seen to be popular even with the younger generation.

The modern versions of conversational AI are reinforcing the value of voice by taking away the frictions, leading to improved experience, at least for some use cases. Conversational AI is not new, but the older versions were highly programmed, rigid, and could only answer limited, non-interactive queries. Modern conversational AI relies on probabilistic models, making it highly interactive and capable of closely emulating human agents. This technology has given birth to virtual AI receptionists that handle calls, greet customers, carry out authentication, identify intent, and route calls. This eliminates long queues and grants customers 24/7 access. The value multiplies with real-time translation, allowing AI receptionists to speak multiple languages. This is a game-changer for diverse ethnic groups who do not speak English as a first language, especially when accessing critical local government public services where expressing needs in a native language is vital.

Driven by rapid tech advancements, conversational AI is expanding from basic receptionists into autonomous AI agents. These agents handle tasks like answering queries, booking appointments, and taking orders. To do this, they require robust technical foundations, integrating seamlessly with knowledge bases and CRMs (systems of record) to provide targeted responses. Linked to the right workflows, AI agents can check calendars to schedule medical visits or process restaurant orders. Combined with 24/7 availability and translation, this dramatically elevates the voice experience for customers. Furthermore, non-technical teams can easily build these bots in agent builder studios by simply describing the desired persona and goals, removing the need for complex coding. As 8×8 CEO Samuel Wilson noted at the company’s analyst summit this June, “The next billion voice numbers will go to AI agents.”

Despite the promise, architectural challenges remain. Latency is a primary hurdle; the traditional multi-step process (like speech-to-text) can create latency, leading to awkward pauses that disrupt conversational flow. Robust guardrails are also critical to stop AI from hallucinating false information, which carries severe financial and legal risks. Additionally, backend integrations can be clunky due to poorly documented APIs or failing connectors. Finally, the compute costs for generative (GenAI) and agentic AI remain high and can be prohibitive for many businesses. While agentic conversational AI is still in its developing stages, steady breakthroughs are addressing initial operational hurdles to gradually enhance the contact center voice experience. This ongoing progress will drive deeper adoption of the voice channel, counteracting previous assumptions that voice would decrease in value.

The quest for ever-more automation within customer contact solutions continues apace. There will always be scenarios where human-to-human conversations are the preferred and best option. But to enable companies to offer voice interaction at the scale that customers demand, AI will have to carry a significant share of the burden. GenAI- and agentic AI-powered conversational AI is fundamentally shifting the voice experience in contact centers and customer service.

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