The tone used in the 80’s to trick and control the phone network to achieve free calls. People who used this frequency were often referred to as phone phreaks, and were known for manipulating high-end switching systems—which is exactly what we do.
Ten years ago, 2600Hz co-founders Darren Schreiber and Patrick Sullivan saw a discrepancy in the telecom industry: large scale carrier grade solutions that could handle heavy volumes didn’t offer flexibility, and open source single-server solutions weren't designed for scale.
Darren and Patrick agreed to found a company in a non-traditional manner, without the common Silicon Valley VC seed rounds, and to operate as a free (as in free speech, not as in free beer), open-source project in an effort to gain mass adoption while keeping the platform and its ideals open to everyone. With that vision in mind, they drew on their past experiences and interactions with the community behind blue.box and formed the 2600Hz Project.
They gathered a team of experienced telecom engineers to build a truly clustered solution that could handle the large scale capability of a carrier grade switch while keeping it open so users could build their own integrations.
The platform is a cloud unified communications software that allows users to take control of their phone system through a full suite of applications. Using the sleek interface, users can create, edit and manage phone systems without being telecom experts. We also made it easy for developers to create telecom applications with open access to 2600Hz APIs. Whether it be voice, mobile, video, fax or SMS, 2600Hz simplifies and opens the cryptic black box of telecom.
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In 2023, 2600Hz was acquired by our long-time customer and collaborator Ooma. Ooma and 2600Hz share a commitment to innovation, exceptional customer service, and the highest quality in communication solutions. By joining forces, we aim to create more powerful, scalable, and open communications solutions for our partners.
Darren is the CEO and Co-Founder of 2600Hz. His contributions to the open source telecom community are immense, including co-authoring the FreeSWITCH books and mentoring at universities and workshops. With nearly two decades of telecom experience under his belt, Darren’s core focus is on distributed computing and communications technologies. He previously ran a large managed services operation, has managed multiple datacenter operations teams and has worked at one of the country's largest CLEC service providers.
Patrick is the COO and Co-Founder of 2600Hz. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science, Patrick quickly realized that he should leave the heavy duty coding to the experts and instead turned his attention to Business. He previously managed large sales teams for a Fortune 100 company, where he worked to bring the techniques and skills that he learned in Computer Science to the business world. In his spare time, he is on the board of directors for BensFriends.org, a non-profit dedicated to patients living with rare diseases or chronic illnesses.
As core design engineer, he led the design and engineering of the 2600Hz Platform, which is mainly written in Erlang. He also serves as a Kamailio and FreeSWITCH expert and general problem solver. Karl’s 16 years of experience in electrical engineering and computer science include developing an entire hosted carrier network from the ground up, managing a large fiber backbone and leading several successful design teams. In short, he is the jack-of-all-trades for all things VoIP. A robotics fanatic and a lover of all things technical, he enjoys building gadgets, taking things apart and fiddling with expensive equipment.
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