There is no doubt that communications has become an increasingly global market, particularly since the pandemic hit in 2020. This has been driven by the rise in platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex, alongside the wider growth in cloud communications and technologies including 5G and IoT.
For players with significant ambitions to put themselves at the forefront of the cloud world, that brings a need for scale and agility, says Mike Mills, business director for the Service Providers division at European B2B provider Gamma Communications.
“If you accept that more and more of the working world will end up on cloud platforms, you have to provide global capability to deliver anything at a meaningful scale,” he says.
Digital culture
At the same time, the increasingly hyperscaler-centric communications environment requires those that provide them with services to ramp up their capabilities fast.
That is why Mills believes players like Gamma are becoming more central to this changing environment, as a company with a lean structure of fewer than 2,500 employees, and a history built on operating as a digitally agile, software-focused telco.
The company provides a portfolio of cloud-based services, including unified communications-as-a-service, communications platform-as-a-service, SIP trunking and IoT services to telcos, ISPs, value-added resellers, software businesses and hyperscalers. Last year, it carried more than 12 billion minutes of traffic for customers.
Since Gamma formed in 2002, it has established a history of getting ahead on digital services, says Mills: “We were really early into that digital space, which has given us a clear competitive advantage, as we are able to operate in a highly automated and efficient way.”
Surfing the Coolwave
Developing with the times, Gamma is now going global, expanding from its traditional presence as a UK-focused business. Having already established an increasing presence in markets including Germany, the Netherlands and Spain with the aid of a number of acquisitions, a key move was its acquisition of international voice and SMS service provider Coolwave Communications in early 2024.
Through the purchase of Coolwave, which operated with points-of-presence in the likes of Amsterdam, Dublin, London and Singapore, Gamma is able to enhance its delivery of voice services in many more countries worldwide. “That’s a vehicle that allows us to accelerate the transition to global communications enablement,” says Mills.
Over the past year, Gamma has put considerable focus into integrating Coolwave and its employees. As a result, it relaunched the Coolwave proposition under the umbrella of Global Communications Enablement solutions at the end of April with a new system at the front end, including a fresh billing platform and a highly consumable set of APIs and portals.
Meanwhile, Gamma’s acquisition of UK unified communications provider Techland through last year’s purchase of EnableX Group has given it Gold status as a partner of global player Ribbon Communications. This enhances its ability to provide secure, scalable international voice services.
Navigating the world
Furthermore, Gamma has a team that Mills says is “well-versed” in navigating the increasingly complex and heavily monitored international regulatory environment, having brought local expertise into the company.
Mills says all these measures will allow Gamma to continue its role as a highly agile partner for customers as it grows and to focus on the principle of “expert globalisation delivered locally”, whereby the company provides an international service but also has the approachable feel of a local provider.
To underline this further, Gamma has launched a contracting model tailored to cloud communications providers that ensures the company does most of the heavy lifting around regional and global telecoms compliance, while allowing the partner to focus on its key strengths.
“We’ve talked to our partners to deeply understand what they needed from a global provider and the early feedback suggests we’ve delivered on that,” says Mills. “Our long-term vision is to put ourselves at the cutting edge of the globalisation of cloud communications.”
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