IBasis

Last updated
IBasis
Type Private
IndustryTelecommunications
Founded1996
FounderOfer Gneezy and Gordon VanderBrug
HeadquartersLexington, Massachusetts
ServicesInternational Voice Services, Value-added Mobile Data Services
Revenue1.2 Billion USD (2010)
Number of employees
370 (2008)
Parent Tofane Global
Website www.ibasis.com

iBASIS is a communications provider based in Lexington, Massachusetts. iBASIS offers voice, mobile data, and IoT services. In February 2019, iBASIS was acquired by Tofane Global from KPN. [1]

Contents

More than 1,000 mobile and fixed line telecommunications carriers and service providers outsourced some or all of their international voice traffic to iBASIS. It had one of the largest carriers of international voice traffic by 2007. [2] iBASIS customers include many carriers, mobile operators, and emerging service providers including Verizon, Vodafone, VSNL, China Mobile, China Unicom, IDT Corporation, Qwest, Skype, Telecom Italia, and Telefonica.

The company also offers online pre-paid international calling services to business and consumer customers through a product called Pingo.

History

iBASIS was founded in 1996 by Ofer Gneezy and Gordon VanderBrug to provide wholesale international long distance services to carriers using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. It held an initial public offering in November 1999 and was ranked the No. 1 fastest growing company in New England for 2000, 2001 and 2002 by Deloitte & Touche. [3]

In October 2007, iBASIS acquired KPN Global Carrier Services, the international voice business of KPN, the national carrier of the Netherlands. [4] KPN became a majority stockholder of iBASIS as part of the transaction. The combined entity carried nearly 24 billion minutes of international voice traffic in 2007. [5]

According to international telecom research firm TeleGeography, that resulting traffic made the new iBASIS one of the three largest carriers of international voice traffic in the world, handling a volume roughly equal to AT&T’s international voice traffic and behind worldwide leader Verizon.

In April 2008, iBASIS also acquired the international wholesale voice business of TDC A/S, a Danish carrier, for $10 million cash, which added 2 billion minutes of annual traffic and was estimated to increase annual revenues by $80 million. [6]

On December 21, 2009 iBASIS became a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal KPN N.V. (NYSE: KPN), the national carrier of the Netherlands, which marketed throughout in Europe. iBASIS is no longer a publicly traded company. [7]

On February 8, 2019 KPN completed the sale of its iBASIS wholesale division to Tofane Global, led by Alexandre Pébereau. With Tofane’s prior acquisition of Altice Europe N.V in September 2018, the combined company became the third largest wholesale voice operator, with revenues of more than $1 billion a year. [8]

Network and Technology

The iBASIS Network includes an international VoIP network with more than 1,000 points of presence in over 100 countries. iBASIS uses technology from Cisco Systems and GenBand (formerly NextPoint and NexTone) and has developed its own monitoring and route quality management systems to determine and select a suitable route for every call. The company was using GSM Association’s IP eXchange, which was developed as an IP backbone for fixed and mobile service providers. [9]

Starting around 2017, iBASIS started marketing using the term Internet of things. [10]

Related Research Articles

Tier 1 network Internet service provider with direct connectivity to the Internet without paying other ISPs to connect to their networks

A Tier 1 network is an Internet Protocol (IP) network that can reach every other network on the Internet solely via settlement-free interconnection. Tier 1 networks can exchange traffic with other Tier 1 networks without paying any fees for the exchange of traffic in either direction. In contrast, some Tier 2 networks and all Tier 3 networks must pay to transmit traffic on other networks.

KPN Dutch multinational telecommunication and internet company

KPN is a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Tiscali S.p.A. is an Italian telecommunications company, based in Cagliari, Sardinia, that provides internet and telecommunications services to its domestic market. It previously had operations in other European nations through its acquisition of many smaller European Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the late 1990s.

Covad Communications Group was an American provider of broadband voice and data communications. By Q3 2006, the company had 530,000 subscribers, and ranked 16th largest ISP in the United States. Covad was acquired by U.S. Venture Partners, who in 2010 announced a 3-way merger of MegaPath, Covad, and Speakeasy, creating a single Managed Services Local Exchange Carrier (MSLEC), providing voice and internet services; the new company was named MegaPath.

Sprint Corporation American telecommunications company

Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before it merged with T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The company also offered wireless voice, messaging, and broadband services through its various subsidiaries under the Boost Mobile and Open Mobile brands and wholesale access to its wireless networks to mobile virtual network operators.

América Móvil Mexican multinational telecommunications company

América Móvil is a Mexican telecommunications corporation headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the 7th largest mobile network operator in terms of equity subscribers and one of the largest corporations in the world. América Móvil is a Forbes Global 2000 company. As of Q1, 2019, América Móvil had 277.4 million wireless subscribers, and 84.3 million fixed revenue generating units.

Generic Access Network (GAN) is a protocol that extends mobile voice, data and multimedia applications over IP networks. Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) is the commercial name used by mobile carriers for external IP access into their core networks. The latest generation system is named Wi-Fi Calling or VoWiFi by a number of handset manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung, a move that is being mirrored by carriers like T-Mobile US and Vodafone. The service is dependent on IMS, IPsec, IWLAN and ePDG.

Intec Telecom Systems is a provider of Business Support System (BSS) software and related services, primarily for the telecommunications industry but increasingly for customers in other industries including Financial Services, Transportation and the Government sector. Listed on the main London stock market, it is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Intec is now officially a part of CSG International.

Lingo Communications, LLC "Lingo" was founded by Vincent M. Oddo, and partners, in 2018 as a voice and broadband provider based in Macon, Georgia and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Lingo is a global Cloud/UC and managed service provider providing IP-based voice and data, mobile services, and other managed services to the Business, Carrier, and Consumer markets. The Lingo name originates from the Lingo VoIP product line which operated under the Primus Telecommunications brand and later transitioned into a product line of Birch Communications with the acquisition of Primus Telecommunications in 2013. In May 2018, Birch Communications divided into two completely separate companies led by Fusion Telecommunications International, Inc. acquiring the Birch enterprise customer sectors. The remaining customer base formed what is now Lingo Communications, LLC or simply Lingo.

Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and between phone and carrier, aiming at replacing SMS messages with a text-message system that is richer, provides phonebook polling, and can transmit in-call multimedia. It is part of broader IP Multimedia Subsystem. Google added support for end-to-end encryption for one-on-one conversations in their own extension.

IP exchange

IP exchange or (IPX) is a telecommunications interconnection model for the exchange of IP based traffic between customers of separate mobile and fixed operators as well as other types of service provider, via IP based Network-to-Network Interface. IPX is developed by the GSM Association.

Inteliquent

Inteliquent is a communications enabler offering network-based voice and messaging services to wireless, cable, carriers and communication service providers. Inteliquent's products include voice, toll-free, messaging, and emergency services. Inteliquent is privately held by GTCR and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

Iristel is a Canadian provider of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services that is a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). The company was founded in 1999, and is headquartered in Markham, Ontario.

The iNum initiative was a project by Voxbone to create a global dial code for IP communications. Voxbone is a Belgian company specializing in wholesale telephone numbers for VoIP applications. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) allocated a portion of the non-geographic "country code" +883 to this initiative. Specifically, iNums were telephone numbers in the format +883 5100 xxxxxxxx.

Genband US LLC was a privately held company that makes IP-based real time communications software products for fixed wireline, mobile, and cable service providers as well as large enterprises. The company was formed in 1999 as General Bandwidth, and is headquartered in Frisco, Texas. In the following 15 years it acquired several other companies doing related work.

Voxbone

Voxbone S.A. is a global communication as a service (CaaS) company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandwidth, Inc., with offices in locations including Brussels, London, San Francisco, Austin, Simi Valley, Dublin, Singapore and Iași. Voxbone became a part of Bandwidth on November 2, 2020.

MegaPath

MegaPath is a business telecommunications company. Founded in 1996, it provides a voice, unified communications, internet access, Managed Security Services, and cloud computing services to carrier and service-provider businesses in the United States. The company is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.

Voice over LTE High-speed wireless communication functionality

Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) is a highspeed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals, including Internet of things (IoT) devices and wearables. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than older 3G UMTS and up to six times more than 2G GSM. It uses less bandwidth because VoLTE's packet headers are smaller than those of unoptimized VoIP/LTE. VoLTE calls are usually charged at the same rate as other calls.

GTT Communications Tier 1 Internet service provider

GTT Communications, Inc. (GTT), formerly Global Telecom and Technology, is a multinational telecommunications and internet service provider company with headquarters in McLean, Virginia, and incorporated in Delaware. GTT operates a Tier 1 IP network, and provides Internet; wide area networking, SD-WAN; security, managed services; and voice and video transport services.

BICS (company) Belgian telecom company

BICS is a telecommunications provider that provides wholesale carrier services to wireline and wireless operators and service providers globally. It is a subsidiary of Proximus Group. The company was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium with sales offices and Service Operation Centers worldwide, including Dubai, Singapore, Bern, San Francisco and New York. BICS provides voice, connectivity, messaging, roaming and mobile connectivity services to over 1,100 fixed and wireless carriers and service providers, including more than 500 mobile operators. In 2012 BICS processed 28 billion international minutes and generated revenues for 1,65 Billion Euros.

References

  1. Capacity, "Alexandre Pébereau completes acquisition of iBasis from KPN," February 8, 2019. https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3823110/alexandre-p-bereau-completes-acquisition-of-ibasis-from-kpn
  2. Telephony, “iBASIS claims No. 2 spot in global voice traffic”, Oct. 1, 2007, http://telephonyonline.com/home/news/ibasis_voip_international_100107
  3. BNET, “iBASIS Named Fastest Growing Technology Company in New England,” Sept. 23, 2002, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Sept_23/ai_91910609
  4. Boston Globe, “iBASIS Deal is Completed”, Oct. 1, 2007, http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/10/ibasis_deal_is.html
  5. iBASIS 2007 10-K Filing, March 17, 2008, http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?repo=tenk&ipage=5536840&format=RTF%5B%5D
  6. Light Reading, “iBASIS Snacks on Danish”, January 16, 2008, http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=143422&f_src=lightreading_gnews
  7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2010-10-06.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. Capacity, "Alexandre Pébereau completes acquisition of iBasis from KPN," February 8, 2019. https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3823110/alexandre-p-bereau-completes-acquisition-of-ibasis-from-kpn
  9. TMCnet, “iBASIS Performs GSMA Trial of IPX Interconnect Service and Standards,” February 12, 2008, "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-03-28. Retrieved 2008-08-14.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. Laurence Doe (May 10, 2019). "iBasis picked for IoT cellular connection deal". Capacity. Retrieved August 23, 2021.