Wednesday, January 21, 2015

20 Years of VoIP

By: Alon Cohen EVP/CTO Phone.com - 2015

It is not often that your name is mentioned in the same sentence with the name of a legend like Alexander Graham Bell. Well, since it happened to me this morning, I thought that a thank you is in order.

So, thank you, Rich Tehrani, for the kind words. Rich is the CEO of TMCNET a media organization that not only covered but also propelled the VoIP industry in many ways since it’s inception, by providing a consistent home for all industry members to meet and discuss ways to make the industry better. I think the upcoming panel in ITEXPO with many of the VoIP veterans, that Rich has put together, is going to be an amazing event.

I also want to thank the people that enabled me to stay humble (as Rich wrote) and yet be remembered like my friends Ari Rabban, the CEO &Co-Founder of Phone.com and a VoIP / VocalTec veteran himself, as well as Dan Berninger who keeps telling people about my contribution and the history of VoIP, so thank you Ari & Dan.

And last but not least I want to thank those who made that history possible, Lior Haramaty my friend and VocalTec Co-founder, along with a very talented group of developers, engineers, marketing and business people some of which are Rami Amit, Ofer Shem-Tov, Dror Tirosh, Ofer Kahane, Elad Sion, Daniel Nissan, Elon Ganor, Scott Wharton, that took the core VoIP technology and worked days and nights to deliver the first commercial VoIP product that we launched during Feb 1995 named “Internet Phone” or “iPhone” that really placed VoIP on the map.

Thank you guys, and all the other amazing people who worked at VocalTec at the time. 

As a final note: like all of us who knew Elad, I wish that Elad Sion was here, with us today, to celebrate those 20 years of VoIP history, Elad’s amazing talent in Math and Computer Science could have made our world a better place.