Voxbone

Voxbone

Type	Private
Industry	Cloud communications
Founded	2005
Founder	Rodrigue Ullens, Co-Founder François Strumann, Co-Founder
Headquarters	Brussels, Belgium
Key people	Itay Rosenfeld, CEO Stef Konings, CFO Gaetan Brichet, COO Dries Plasman, VP of Product Management Dirk Hermans, VP Research and Development Anne-Valerie Heuschen, VP Corporate Affairs
Products	VoxDID, Vox800, VoxFAX, VoxSMS, and VoxOUT
Number of employees	90
Website	www.voxbone.com

Voxbone is a cloud communications (IaaS) company based in Brussels (Belgium), London (United Kingdom), Los Angeles and San Francisco (California). Voxbone enables telephony applications such as conferencing and contact centers to receive phone calls, text messages and faxes in 55+ countries.^[1] The company’s services are accessed through a web portal or REST API.^[2] Voxbone services are delivered over a private IP network that interconnects with local phone networks in the countries where it operates.^[3]

Voxbone customers include Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, NTT, Level(3), Orange and Skype.^[4][5][6]

In 2011, the company launched a “global capacity-sharing model” to tackle the complex tasks and costs associated with planning and managing global voice traffic. Customers are charged according to their peak simultaneous sessions globally (vs. total minute usage per country, or geographical origin of calls, in traditional models).^[7]

History

Voxbone was founded in Brussels, Belgium, in 2005 by Rodrigue Ullens and Francois Struman as Voxbone SA/NV.^[8] As a consultant for telecom operators, Ullens noticed the growing demand for phone numbers from other countries and decided to create the business.^[9] The founders’ mission was to offer simplified access to telephony resources through the cloud.^[10]

In August 2015 Vitruvian Partners LLP (“Vitruvian”), a leading independent European private equity firm, announced that it had acquired a majority stake in Voxbone SA.^[11]

Services

Voxbone provides local geographical, mobile and toll free phone numbers (commonly known as Direct inward dial numbers), which telecommunication providers or enterprises use to extend the reach of their voice networks to international locations without requiring a local office, network or license for each country.^[12] Voxbone also supports local number portability and offers the ability to port existing local telephone numbers from other local service providers to its network.^[13][14]

VoxDID - Inbound SIP trunking with local geographic, mobile and non-geographic telephone numbers. These are numbers from the country's regular telephone numbering plan. This service is available from 55+ countries.^[15]

Vox800 - Inbound SIP trunking with local toll free numbers. This service is comparable to the International Toll Free Service (ITFS). It does not charge per-minute for the international transport of calls.^[16][17]

VoxFAX and VoxSMS - Voxbone’s products for supporting inbound SMS and faxes and fax-to-email on its SIP trunks.^[18]

VoxOUT - Voxbone does not offer voice call termination services with the exception of one destination: local emergency numbers (e.g. 112 in Europe or 911 in North America). Offering an end-user the ability to dial 112 or 911 is a regulatory obligation.^[19] As voice termination providers offer only the ability to dial regular geographical and mobile numbers, Voxbone introduced this service following requests of their customers.^[20]

WebRTC - In May 2014, Voxbone announced the start of a beta phase of a WebRTC service. Voxbone routes WebRTC calls over its global MPLS data network to make WebRTC calls less vulnerable to quality of service issues resulting from the congestion on the public Internet.^[21][22]

Applications

Voxbone DID numbers and SIP trunks can play a role in different types of applications:

• Cloud PBX and SIP trunking companies get local telephone numbers from Voxbone to make their IP-based voice and unified communications (UC) services reachable from local PSTN networks in many countries. Examples of such companies include: 8x8 Inc., ThinkingPhones.^[23][24]
• Conferencing providers use Voxbone's local numbers to offer their end-users the ability to dial into a conferencing bridge from any country. Examples of such companies include: Arkadin, Zoom, Speek, LoopUp.^{[25][26][27][28]}
• International calling companies which offer low-cost international calling rates use Voxbone's services to provide local dial-in numbers to their customers. They also reserve call capacity on Voxbone's VoIP backbone. Such companies include: Skype and IDT.^[29][30]
• Telecom API companies develop communication applications that developers can integrate into their own applications (for example, a website for appointment booking can integrate SMS reminders and confirmations via these Telecom API providers). Examples of such companies include: Deutsche Telekom's Developer Garden, Aculab.^[31]
• Contact centers: Multinational enterprise contact centers manage their own contact centers using Voxbone's services to provide local numbers to their customers around the world. Cloud contact centers integrate Voxbone's local phone-numbers into their systems to offer outsourcing options. Examples of such companies include inContact and LiveOps.^[32]

International Networks

Several decades ago, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) created two new ranges in the global telephone numbering plan for “International Networks.” International networks are telecommunication services that are not linked in any way to a geographical area; hence +882 and +883 are “country codes” are not linked to any country. +882 numbers are to be used in conjunction with private networks (e.g. global private ATM networks), while +883 numbers are intended for use with public telecommunications networks, such as the Internet.^[33][34][35]

Voxbone received the +883 5510 number range in the +883 code from the ITU. With this number range, the company started an “open source”-like initiative where service providers can obtain a sub-range of these numbers and use them for communication between each other without the PSTN. The initiative is called iNum. The service operates on a SIP server, accessible from the Internet, hosted by Voxbone and supports voice, video and text messaging between networks. By the end of 2013, around 100 VoIP service providers had made use of iNum numbers. Google and Skype route calls to iNum numbers from their network as do several wholesale voice termination providers such as iBasis and BICS.^[36]

In 2010, the ITU created a new country code for the United Nations. The number range, +888, is intended to be used by the mobile disaster relief forces of the UN, OCHA. Voxbone operates these numbers, on behalf of the United Nations.^[37]

External links

• Voxbone
• United Nations - OCHA (country code +888) – International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
• Voxbone SA (country code +883 5100) – International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

References