Bandwidth

The Bandwidth Story

(video)

It all started in 1999 when our founder and CEO, David Morken, was living in a duplex with his parents. With three months paid leave from the Marines, a reserved domain name and an idea, he created bandwidth.com®, which over the years has evolved into a leading software-driven communications company providing voice, messaging and emergency services to enterprise-grade users.

The business model and its success would lead to an appearance in Forbes in September 1999, and to his first sizable outside investment.

Establishing Bandwidth in Raleigh, North Carolina allowed the team to tap into Raleigh’s wealth of talent surrounding the local businesses and universities. That talent would prove crucial in the early 2000s, as Bandwidth evolved from its humble beginnings to building its own nationwide all-IP voice network. One of the last to be built in the US.

In 2009, Bandwidth helped Google launch Google Voice, a first of its kind product at the time. Microsoft, Zoom, LogMeIn, GoDaddy, and others would soon come to leverage Bandwidth in their own platforms.

Focused on solving increased customer needs and growing demand, our team found themselves developing a software platform, APIs, and dashboards to help customers access and build around the Bandwidth network. Eventually, the Bandwidth portfolio would expand from Voice services to Messaging, and in 2011 acquired Dash Carrier Services to add Emergency Service capabilities.

That vertical integration of a software platform built on top of a network led the company to become a leader in the burgeoning CPaaS (communications platform as a service) market, and ultimately to going public in 2017.

In 2020, Bandwidth announced its intention to acquire enterprise cloud communications leader Voxbone. Upon closing, Bandwidth’s combined platform would become a leading global enterprise communications provider with coverage in 60+ countries (representing 93% of global GDP).