More Proof That Business Telephony and APIs are Irretrievably Conjoined

A new survey has revealed that more than half of businesses are choosing telecom providers based on the availability of application programming interfaces (APIs). Telephony APIs are typically used to add features to existing applications such as call conferencing, call recording and SMS. As APIs move toward becoming the preferred way for businesses to access wholesale telephony solutions, the study indicates that in the future, APIs and business telephony will be increasingly joined at the hip.

The Wholesale Voice Buyers Survey, commissioned by inetwork and conducted by ATLANTIC-ACM, attempts to cast light on ways in which the telecommunications industry is shifting away from traditional means, as we enter a new era of business telephony.

The survey polled key decision makers at companies that purchase wholesale IP-based voice, 9-1-1 and SMS services. When asked which factors would be most disruptive to business telephony, “Death of the Landline/Desk Phone” and “100% VoIP Over LTE” were at the top of the list–hardly a surprise to us, as we’ve been predicting the slow death of the desktop phone.

It’s easy to see why businesses are embracing telephony APIs with increasing fervor.

Courtesy of Bandwidth and ATLANTIC-ACM

Making Products Better through Telephony

APIs allow developers to create innovative new products, while democratizing infrastructure costs. Instead of having to focus on the robust IT costs that have traditionally been associated with enterprise telephony solutions, APIs allow developers to directly integrate telephony into end-user applications. This allows companies like ours to focus on creating the game-changing solutions that are disrupting the telecom industry.

These new solutions are already sending shockwaves through the telecom industry. 47% of respondents to ATLANTIC-ACM’s survey indicated that new competition will have a a negative impact on business growth. In the words of Inetwork, “There’s a new breed of competitor approaching telecom from the software as a service (SaaS) and application developer perspective.”

Interestingly, the APIs are driving purchase decisions in large numbers across various industry segments from application providers, to marketing firms, to cloud service providers, demonstrating an industry-wide shift toward API adoption.

According to Steve Leonard, executive vice president and general manager of Bandwidths inetwork devision, “ are developing ‘over-the-top apps’ for IP-enabled mobile devices, call analytics purposes, rich media, social networks, limited only by their imagination.”

We’re big API fans too. Even as we work to improve our free and paid solutions, we’re also busy perfecting Revenue.io APIs that will allow developers to bring the power of our products into their own applications.