By Allan Maurer
CARY, NC—Bandwidth.com, a company providing VOIP and data services over its own network, has invited select developers to play in its sandbox. “Bandwidth is opening its network to developers in unique ways,” says Bandwidth’s Todd Barr. The idea is to accelerate development of next generation applications, with prize money for “great ideas.”
“The strategy is to combine open source software and the network to see what developers can do with those two things.” One possibility, he suggests, is texting over VOIP so users could send text messages over a standard phone line.
“You can’t text from a desk phone today, but that capability is available on our network. We ask, what would they do with that?” says Barr. “So developers are interested.”
The initial focus of the program will be to enable a select group of telephony-focused developers to join Bandwidth.com’s internal pilot projects that are focused on:
• IP communications network functionality, such as next-generation VoIP codecs, the T38 fax protocol, SIP enabled SMS, and HD voice
• Fixed-mobile convergence functionality, such as sharing one number across both mobile and landlines, advanced call-flows and call routing, and unique new telephony applications
• Open source telephony, focused on FreePBX (a Bandwidth.com sponsored open source project)
This month, the company also announced the announced the immediate availability of the Developer’s Preview of FreePBX v3. FreePBX , sponsored by Bandwidth.com, is the most popular open source telephony management GUI.
It serves as a basis for the management interfaces in AsteriskNOW and Trixbox CE (see asterisknow.org and trixbox.org for version details), as well as many other open source PBX distributions. It has been downloaded over 3 million times, and counts approximately 300,000 active phone systems.
The company says the latest version introduces a new architecture that makes it much easier for developers to contribute to it.
Developers will have to submit short applications and “We’re being very selective,” says Barr.
Founded in 1999, Bandwidth.com sells VOIP and data services primarily to small and medium-sized businesses, with a smaller, but lucrative set of larger enterprise customers. The 170-employee company did about $75 million in revenue last year and is on track to top that this year, Barr tells TechJournal South. It has about 5,000 customers.
Funded by angel investors and friends and family, the company never took institutional money and funds its initiatives out of cash flow and “creative means,” says Barr, such as working out deals with partners rather than taking equity.
Bandwidth landed on the Inc. list of the 500 fastest growing companies in America three years running, 2006-2008. Last year it was the fourth fastest growing firm in the country, according to Inc.
It also won the Triangle Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work” designation in 2006 and 2008 and numerous other awards from Frost and Sullivan, American Venture Magazine.com, and Business Leader Magazine.
One of the major reasons for the company’s ongoing success is that it can save companies up to 50 percent over traditional phone service costs.
Its SIP Trunking service offers businesses a digital phone line for $30 a month, and it will integrate with existing business PBX systems or customers can buy its Phonebooth product, a Web-based portal with all the business features of a PBX.
Barr says the company also offers businesses a “centralization play for multiple locations” that gives them flexibility in opening a new location or closing one. If you have 20 locations, with VOIP you can consolidate them,’’ he explains.
The company’s founders, Henry Kaestner and David Morken, are also well known in the Research Triangle for their charity work through Bandwidth Cares and Durham Cares.
For the future, Barr says the company is doing some internal testing of fixed-mobile convergence, which would let one number ring multiple phones, both an office desk phone and a mobile. “There are some challenges around it and we’re doing internal pilot programs,” Barr says.
The company plans to launch version 2 of it’s Phonebooth hosted voice service by the Fall..
Online: www.bandwidth.com
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