IT leaders overseeing UCaaS and CCaaS or overall telephony infrastructure are being pulled in every direction. Cloud migration might no longer be their main pain point this year, but reliability gaps, security threats, tech changes, and market uncertainty still keep piling on the pressure.
Bandwidth’s 2025 Enterprise Communications Landscape survey spotlights these enterprise voice communications issues and how tech leaders from single-region or multi-regional organizations tackle them.
1. Reliability and quality remain the top enterprise voice communications challenge
For the second year running, high uptime and call quality lead the list of concerns in enterprise telephony.
How did we get here? The more companies move parts of their infrastructures to the cloud or third-party providers, the more they outsource control, which raises the stakes for consistent performance. It’s why 49.67% of enterprises rank active network monitoring, call quality, and uptime as their top carrier selection criteria, knowing every connection impacts CX, EX, and ROI.
The enterprise communications fix: Ask for proof
Most providers will promise “carrier-grade” quality, but you shouldn’t have to settle for marketing speak. Ask about dashboards, insights, and uptime records at 99.999% or higher.
Meanwhile, nearly 40% of IT leaders are also upgrading support plans or SLAs to solve reliability and quality problems.
2. Fraud and security risks are rising fast
Over 50% of IT leaders are highly concerned about contact center security. That’s because they’re getting hit on both sides of enterprise telephony, and it’s hurting customer trust and revenue. They’re fending off inbound threats like authentication attacks and AI scams while trying to keep their outbound calls from being flagged as spam. 42% of businesses currently face this mislabeling problem.
The enterprise communications fix: Pick a partner, not a vendor
You need a provider who will co-develop with you and help you test and try new solutions as fraud and security threats evolve. Enterprise voice communications solutions such as:
- ANI validation
- Voice bioauthentication
- Deepfake detection
- Branded calling
- Call label monitoring
- Call label remediation
3. User experience demands aren’t letting up
Speed of delivery may have slipped out of the top five enterprise telephony tech challenges (it was #5 in 2024), but user experience hasn’t budged. Customers and agents rely on prompt call handling, and while tech is catching up–often thanks to AI enhancements–many enterprise voice communications systems are still lagging behind. Roughly 60% of IT leaders find managing their comms stack moderately to highly challenging, and almost half grapple with third-party integrations.
The enterprise communications fix: Choose platforms built for AI interoperability
48% of enterprises now prioritize AI/ML implementation. Chatbot usage is up 19%, call transcription up 17%, agent assist up 12%, and AI-driven automation can even speed up code generation by as much as 45%.
AI is already improving CX and EX, and you’ll get the most value when your platform lets you plug in your AI of choice, not just what’s bundled with your UCaaS or CCaaS provider.
4. Cloud migration is less of a headache, but it’s far from done
A growing majority of tech teams have already crossed the cloud migration line and are finding UCaaS and CCaaS platforms easier to configure than expected. In fact, only 28.7% still lose sleep over it, down from 47.5% last year.
With fewer than 10% planning to stay on-prem, the next hurdle is nailing cloud-to-cloud migrations.
The enterprise communications fix: Build a flexible architecture
Work with a provider that can adapt when your needs change (and they will). Do they support plug-and-play integrations regardless of your cloud setup? Can they interoperate with third-party AI and other new technologies? Can you BYOC? 53.4% of companies have already chosen voice carriers independently from their enterprise voice communications platforms to stay agile.
5. Price point pressure reemerges for enterprise voice communications
U.S. GDP growth is projected to slow to 1.6% by next year and sit 11% below the historical average over the next two years. This economic drag is weighing on telecom, too. With the push to cut OpEx and CapEx in favor of sustainable growth, 25% of IT leaders cite cost as a primary issue, marking its reentry into the top five challenges in 2025.
The enterprise communications fix: Consolidate your tech stack
Simplify where you can. You might be unable to consolidate every part of your enterprise telephony, but what about your global carriers? Or your CX tools? Compared to 2024, more organizations are now leaning into carrier consolidation: 73% use five or fewer telecom carriers, nearly 74% manage just 1–3 communications platforms, and 77% operate with six or fewer third-party tools.
Rethink your enterprise communications with resilience in mind
Enterprise telephony challenges may put IT teams through the wringer, but solving them could be what helps businesses pull ahead.
So, in 2025, focus on building scalable, secure enterprise voice communications that integrate AI and improve CX and EX. And when picking a carrier, go with one that can deliver layers of built-in redundancy, disaster recovery, and global reach. That’s how Bandwidth does it!
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