Bandwidth Inc wraps up Ribbon deal to boost home network capacity for AWS

Following a rapid spike in demand, provider of enterprise, critical infrastructure and operator real-time communications software and network solutions Ribbon Communications is partnering with software company Bandwidth Inc to rapidly expand network capacity for the latter’s remote working customers using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Explaining the rationale and key drivers for the partnership, Bandwidth said its team needed to quickly address changing demands for network capacity due to March’s Covid-19-induced stay-at-home orders and the subsequent rapid rise in the number of people working from home.

Under the terms of the partnership, Bandwidth was able to take advantage of Ribbon’s Session Border Controller Software Edition (SBC SWe) for expanded network capacity via the AWS cloud infrastructure.

Ribbon’s SBC SWe virtual solution can scale up to 150,000 sessions via simple software licences, allowing operational teams to expand capacity in hours, rather than days or months. SBC SWe’s scale includes fully enabled security, media and transcoding features that are designed for use by large enterprises in accommodating dynamic customer growth, resulting in faster time-to-market and reduced operational expenses.

The solution can be deployed on any virtual or cloud environment – either private or public, as is the trend with cloud deployments these days – without compromising features, scale or performance, and with no truck roll.

Ribbon technology delivers to a number of platforms, including core to edge IP solutions, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and communications platform as a service (CPaaS) cloud offerings, software security and analytics tools, as well as packet and optical networking using elastic network technology from ECI Telecom Group with whom it merged earlier this year.  

“We worked with the Ribbon team to rapidly deploy its SBC SWe and were able to easily accommodate the rapid spike in demand from our customers,” said Bandwidth chief technology officer (CTO) Scott Mullen. “Our customers are some of the most recognised brands in the world and they have come to expect world-class support from Bandwidth. We are extremely proud of the fact that we could collaborate with Ribbon to leverage its cloud-based SBC technology to quickly and seamlessly meet the immediate high demand for increased network capacity.”

Ribbon’s CTO, Kevin Riley, added: “This swift deployment of our cloud-ready SBC SWe on AWS by our long-time partner Bandwidth is a great example of how we work closely with our customers to meet their -customers’ rapidly changing needs. Bandwidth is a leader when it comes to offering its customers innovative solutions and services. We are delighted that Bandwidth leveraged our SBC SWe to rapidly scale capacity and deliver secure, advanced, cloud-based communications services that allowed its customers to switch to working from home instead of the office without disruptions to their network.”

Further supporting its remote working capability, Ribbon has announced Ribbon Connect, a portfolio of subscription-based “as-a-service” offerings. The first part of the portfolio supports Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and is designed to enable voice-calling capabilities in the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform.

Ribbon sees Connect as providing a seamless way for service providers, value-added resellers and systems integrators to quickly tap into this rapidly expanding Microsoft Teams market – said to be one of the fastest growing unified communications (UC) platforms in the world with more than 100 million daily active users – by simplifying the process to which it can add voice-calling capabilities.