When Canadian businesses talk about cloud communications, TELUS Business Connect is already a familiar name. Now, that platform is about to get a serious AI upgrade. TELUS and RingCentral have announced an expansion of their long-standing partnership, bringing deeper, more practical AI capabilities directly into TELUS Business Connect, with availability expected in early 2026.

This is not a flashy AI announcement built around buzzwords. It is a move that reflects how business communications are actually evolving: less about tools for their own sake, more about automation, insight, and customer experience that works quietly in the background.

What Business Connect really is today

At its core, TELUS Business Connect replaces legacy phone systems with a fully cloud-based communications platform. Calls, messages, meetings, and collaboration all live in one place, accessible from anywhere. For small and mid-sized businesses especially, that unified setup has already become table stakes.

What is changing now is how intelligent that platform becomes.

As customer expectations rise and competition tightens, businesses no longer just need to answer calls. They need to understand customers faster, respond more consistently, and extract insight from everyday conversations without adding complexity or headcount.

That is exactly where the expanded AI layer comes in.

Why AI in communications has become non-optional

Across the market, AI-powered communications are quickly shifting from “nice to have” to business-critical. Customers expect immediate answers. Employees are stretched thin. Managers want data without dashboards that require training.

TELUS Business Connect is addressing this reality by embedding AI features that automate routine work, support agents in real time, and surface insights that would otherwise stay buried in conversations.

Importantly, this is not positioned as enterprise-only technology. TELUS is clearly aiming to make advanced communications AI usable for businesses without in-house IT or data teams.

The AI capabilities coming to Business Connect

AI Assistant and automation

RingCentral’s AI Assistant, also known as RingCentral AVA, acts as a real-time layer across conversations. It listens, understands context, and helps turn live interactions into actions. That can mean surfacing next steps during a call, capturing summaries automatically, or triggering follow-ups without manual input.

AI Receptionist

The AI Receptionist goes a step further by acting as an intelligent front line. It understands caller intent, answers common questions in a personalized way, books appointments, and routes calls based on context and company directories. For businesses that still rely on human receptionists or basic IVRs, this represents a meaningful shift.

AI Insights for sales and coaching

AI Insights focuses on sentiment analysis and performance improvement. By analyzing conversations, it helps sales teams understand what is working, where conversations stall, and how agents can improve. The emphasis here is coaching and enablement, not surveillance.

AI Chat and omnichannel engagement

AI Chat enables real-time website messaging, handling common customer questions instantly while allowing human teams to focus on more complex interactions. This fits neatly into the broader move toward conversational commerce and always-on support.

AI Contact Centre

RingCentral’s AI Contact Centre, RingCX, brings omnichannel customer service together across more than 20 digital channels. Agents and supervisors benefit from AI-powered assistance designed to improve response quality, consistency, and efficiency.

What TELUS and RingCentral are saying

Katherine Emberly, Senior Vice-president and President, Small and Medium Business at TELUS, frames the update as a practical advantage for customers:

“Businesses are looking for technology that works as hard as they do. By integrating RingCentral’s advanced AI capabilities into Business Connect, we’re giving our customers a competitive edge, elevating every customer interaction while freeing up their teams to focus on growing their business and serving their customers.”

From RingCentral’s side, the focus is clearly on long-term transformation rather than incremental upgrades. Sandra Krief, SVP Global Service Providers at RingCentral, puts it this way:

“Together we’re excited to bring the full power of AI to expand upon our more than ten-year mission of enabling organizations across Canada to work smarter, respond faster, and turn communications into a true competitive advantage. By integrating RingCentral’s industry-leading voice, contact center and conversational AI across Business Connect, we are transforming everyday interactions into intelligence, efficiency, and exceptional customer experiences.”

How does this compare with the wider market?

TELUS is not alone in pushing AI deeper into business communications. Globally, players like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Cisco Webex are all investing heavily in AI assistants, meeting summaries, and contact center intelligence. In the contact center space, platforms such as Genesys and NICE are also racing to embed generative AI into customer journeys.

What differentiates TELUS Business Connect is focus and positioning. Rather than building a horizontal productivity suite, TELUS is leaning into communications as the intelligence layer of the business. Combined with RingCentral’s maturity in voice and contact center technology, this creates a stack that feels purpose-built rather than bolted together.

For Canadian SMBs in particular, there is also a trust factor. TELUS already owns the relationship, the connectivity, and the support model. Adding AI inside that ecosystem reduces friction compared to adopting standalone tools from global SaaS vendors.

Conclusion

The expansion of TELUS Business Connect with RingCentral’s AI is less about chasing trends and more about acknowledging a structural shift in how businesses communicate. Conversations are no longer just exchanges of information. They are data sources, experience drivers, and operational signals.

Industry research from firms like Gartner and McKinsey consistently shows that AI adoption in customer service and communications delivers the highest ROI when it is embedded into existing workflows rather than introduced as a separate layer. TELUS appears to be taking that lesson seriously.

As competitors continue to fragment their offerings across meetings, chat, voice, and contact centers, TELUS Business Connect is moving in the opposite direction. One platform, one experience, and now one intelligence layer across it all.

For businesses navigating rising expectations with limited resources, that kind of integrated, quietly powerful AI may matter far more than the loudest AI announcement on the market.