The communications landscape is evolving at an incredible rate, with businesses everywhere turning towards cloud-based platforms to access lower costs, higher flexibility, and improved productivity for their teams. BICS, a leading provider in international communications enablement, is one of the vendors helping today’s service providers to give organisations the global and flexible communication environments that they need in the cloud.
BICS creates communications solutions that are essential for supporting the demands of today’s ever-evolving consumer base. Whether you’re looking for seamless global communications or local numbers in multiple countries, BICS has it all, complete with anti-fraud solutions and professional compliance services.
One of the most exciting features of BICS’ Cloud Communications solution for global expansion is that it comes with access to a state-of-the-art API portal.
I caught up with the Product Manager of Cloud Communications for BICS, Daniel Behar, to learn more about how their numbers and API portal offerings are empowering today’s global service providers.
Numbers in More Than 130 Countries
Working in the Voice Innovation department at BICS, Daniel was in an excellent position to tell me about how numbers-as-a-service solutions offered by the company have evolved over the years. Today, BICS offers international expansion options for the CCaaS and UCaaS providers around the world. The organisation’s API portal enables simple real-time number provisioning and management, alongside address updating capabilities, putting expansion within reach for its customers. By removing the headache of regulations, fraud, and emergency services compliance for service providers, BICS can give companies everything they need to evolve with numbers, whether that’s easily integrating them into their existing systems or white labeling for their own customers.
Behar told me that BICS provides numbers and value-added services for a wide variety of companies, solving the common problems that service providers face every day. “Everything we do comes back to numbers, as those are the first thing a company needs.
“We sell numbers in more than 130 countries. In some locations, we have our own local telephone service operator license. In other areas, we partner with Tier 1 operators”
BICS’ USP is the expansive global coverage on offer to customers in need of international solutions for telecoms. Businesses can come to BICS for all of their telecommunication needs, as the company stands as one of the top carriers worldwide. It’s not just numbers that they offer either, but value-added services too.
Powering CPaaS, UCaaS and CCaaS Providers
BICS started off providing services in Europe in 1997 and has since expanded their presence across the globe. “We’ve started to invest in more new and enhanced services as demand for business communications has picked up. At first, we were providing numbers-as-a-service to tier 1 service operators; with the evolution of business communications and cloud adoption, we are addressing cloud based service providers – CPaaS, CCaaS, UCaaS and enterprises.”
BICS has recently begun to place more focus on its UCaaS offering, with not only numbers-as-a-service, but also a full enterprise SIP telephony stack for the UCaaS provider. Daniel told me that the solution provides local numbers via SIP trunking in various countries. “We only need a single SIP trunk to carry traffic over 10 countries. We also have plans to expand our offering to more countries in the next 12 months, but we want to make sure that we’re fully compliant before we go to new locations.”
The innovative thing about BICS is that they can provide everything that their users need in a single easy-to-use portal, with immersive APIs for live provisioning too. Their range of flexible and easy-to-deploy APIs automates number management with no need for manual intervention or protocols, while being industry standard and compatible with any platform. They’re also continuing to expand their SIP trunk offering going forward, and they want to ensure compliance and regulatory demands are being taken seriously.
Country Regulations and Compliance Made Easy
While global expansion is becoming a common goal for many companies, there are a lot of regulatory compliance issues to consider when a vendor or service provider goes international. Behar told me that compliance is a common concern for BICS’ customers. That’s why the team has a group of legal specialists on board, complete with regulatory insights for every country where they operate.
“We can guide all of our customers on what they need to operate safely in different countries. We advise our customers on what the regulatory requirements are and also protect them against fraud”
The regulatory compliance piece is something that BICS takes very seriously for their clients, and specialists are always on hand to help answer any questions that customers might have – their API portal hosts a customer support dashboard for troubleshooting purposes. After all, regulations and local compliance aren’t always easy to handle. “We’re making sure that we can do all the heavy lifting for customers so that we’re taking the stress out of the global expansion journey. We offer solutions that are easy to set up and ideal for quick growth.”
Integrated Ordering and Provisioning via APIs
After launching their API offering only last year, BICS already has a huge library of API options in place. “We’re putting a lot of focus into growing this area very quickly, as we can see a lot of demand for APIs in the market.” BICS also offers personalised APIs, so all number requirements can be catered to for their customers.
Through the BICS APIs, users can buy numbers in real-time and check what numbers are in stock to cover the specific needs of each country or city. BICS allows users to choose the specific numbers that they need, and access extra value-added services on top of their number provisioning options. “We offer APIs for number configuration and management, and they can order and provision their numbers with APIs too.”
Essentially, the API strategy means that UCaaS providers can query available numbers, select the location that they need and that are in stock, and provision those numbers instantly.
What’s Next for BICS?
BICS is keen to continue growing its position in the numbers-as-a-service offering and communications landscape. “We’re set to add more countries into our SIP trunk offering in the next 12 months.” According to Daniel, BICS will be committing more time and money to their value-added services and APIs going forward too.
