Singapore‑based AI CX platform Toku announced today that its carrier‑grade local numbering and PSTN routing are now available for Zoom Contact Center in 14 Asia‑Pacific markets. The integration lets Zoom customers select Toku as a voice‑connectivity provider directly in the Zoom admin portal, extending the same service the company has offered for Zoom Phone since 2021.
What the integration delivers
The new option adds local phone numbers, in‑country call routing, and compliance‑ready PSTN access to Zoom Contact Center’s omnichannel suite. Enterprises can provision a Toku‑backed number for each market—Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, and ten others—without renegotiating carrier contracts. The service is billed separately from the Zoom subscription, giving businesses flexibility to mix‑and‑match connectivity and software layers.
How Toku’s network stack works
Toku owns the entire voice‑transport chain, from the carrier‑grade SIP trunk to the AI‑enabled application layer that powers virtual agents and analytics. By controlling the underlying network, Toku can guarantee QoS (Quality of Service) metrics such as latency < 150 ms and packet loss < 0.1 %, thresholds often cited for high‑fidelity speech recognition. When a Zoom Contact Center interaction invokes an AI virtual agent, the call is routed through Toku’s private backbone to the nearest data centre, where the speech‑to‑text engine and language model run. The result is a seamless hand‑off between AI and human agents, with the same local number displayed to the caller.
Why carrier‑grade matters for AI agents
AI‑driven contact centers place far stricter demands on voice quality than traditional telephony. Speech‑to‑text accuracy drops by up to 15 % when jitter exceeds 200 ms, according to a 2022 study by the International Telecommunication Union. Toku’s end‑to‑end ownership eliminates the “black‑box” carrier hops that can introduce latency spikes, thereby preserving transcription fidelity for downstream sentiment analysis and intent detection. The move also helps enterprises meet regional regulatory rules on data residency, a critical factor for sectors such as finance and healthcare.
Competitive landscape
Zoom’s native voice partner for Contact Center has been Twilio, while competitors like Google Contact Center AI, Amazon Connect, and Genesys Cloud offer their own PSTN integrations. Toku differentiates itself by bundling the carrier layer with an AI‑ready stack, whereas most rivals treat connectivity as a separate utility. This vertical integration mirrors the strategy of firms such as Microsoft, which pairs Azure Voice Services with its Dynamics 365 Customer Service AI. As AI adoption accelerates—Gartner predicts 75 % of customer‑service interactions will be AI‑powered by 2025—providers that can guarantee both voice quality and AI performance will gain a competitive edge.
Potential limitations and risks
- Enterprise contracts with Toku are negotiated outside the Zoom billing system, which may add procurement overhead for large organizations.
- Regulatory compliance varies widely across the 14 markets; while Toku claims to handle numbering rules, customers remain responsible for data‑privacy obligations.
- Reliance on a single connectivity vendor could create a single‑point‑of‑failure risk if network outages occur in a specific region.
Business implications for enterprises
For multinational contact centers, the integration reduces the time‑to‑market for new local numbers from weeks to minutes, according to Toku’s internal metrics. Companies can now launch AI virtual agents in any of the supported markets without a separate carrier onboarding process. The model also enables cost‑optimisation: Toku’s usage‑based pricing lets firms pay only for minutes consumed, which aligns with the variable‑volume nature of contact‑center workloads.
Impact on AI infrastructure and development
By providing a stable, low‑latency voice layer, Toku indirectly supports the broader AI stack—large language models (LLMs) that power conversational agents, speech‑recognition pipelines, and real‑time sentiment dashboards. The integration showcases a trend toward “AI‑first” networking, where the transport layer is engineered for machine‑learning workloads rather than human‑only calls. This could spur further collaboration between telecom operators and AI platform vendors, echoing recent joint roadmaps from NVIDIA and telecom carriers on edge‑AI for voice.
Next steps for customers
Enterprises interested in the service can enable Toku in the Zoom Admin Center, then complete a separate connectivity contract with Toku. The company provides a self‑service portal for number provisioning, usage reporting, and SLA monitoring. Full rollout is expected to begin in Q4 2026, with additional APAC markets slated for 2027.
Market Landscape
The contact‑center market is projected to exceed $30 billion globally by 2027, driven largely by AI‑enabled automation. Gartner’s 2023 survey found that 57 % of contact‑center leaders plan to deploy AI virtual agents within the next two years, while IDC estimates AI‑related spend in CX will surpass $9 billion in 2026. In APAC, regional players such as Alibaba Cloud and NTT Communications have launched native voice‑AI solutions, but few combine carrier‑grade PSTN with a proprietary AI platform. Toku’s approach therefore fills a niche where enterprises need both regulatory‑compliant local numbers and high‑fidelity speech processing. Competitors like Twilio and Vonage offer global PSTN but rely on third‑party AI stacks, potentially adding latency. The partnership positions Zoom to compete more aggressively against Amazon Connect, which bundles AWS voice services but has limited local‑number coverage in some APAC jurisdictions.
Top Insights
- Integrating carrier‑grade PSTN with AI agents improves speech‑to‑text accuracy, a key factor for reliable virtual‑assistant performance.
- Enterprises can now provision local numbers in 14 APAC markets through a single Zoom UI, cutting onboarding time dramatically.
- Vertical integration of connectivity and AI distinguishes Toku from pure‑play carriers and aligns with Gartner’s 2025 AI‑contact‑center forecast.
- Separate billing for Toku may add procurement steps, but usage‑based pricing offers cost flexibility for variable call volumes.
- The move underscores a broader industry shift toward networking infrastructure designed expressly for machine‑learning workloads.
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