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November 18, 2013

Startup Speek Speaks Up to Speed Up Teleconferencing Development


In many ways, technology is moving so fast we can't even process it, but there are still some areas where we are a bit, how do I put this delicately? Slow. This lackluster speed is seen particularly in the area of telecommunications.

In most teleconferencing situations, the user still has to enter a code when joining a conference line. This may not sound like such a hassle, as the process takes only a handful of microseconds, but in the digital age, every microsecond counts. Several startups are poised to revolutionize the field of telecommunications, or at least, speed it up.

Speek, a teleconferencing startup based in Ashburn, Va. is dedicated to eradicating the fussiness of conference calling. The company offers a single link to have a phone conversation with any person or group, on any Internet-connected device, anywhere on the face of the globe. It works by going to a link such as "speek.com UserIDName" instead of a nine-digit number users usually punche in to gain access to the line. Unlike other Web-based apps, a user doesn't need to download any software before activating. Sounds like something that should have been in existence since the wee early days of Skype, and yet it's taken this much time to develop.

The co-founder and CTO of Speek, Danny Boice, spoke to Lauren Orsini of ReadWrite.com about why the category of telecommunications has been so slow to catch on, and how Speek is different. 

“From the merry old world of copper and the public telephone network to the emerging universe of fiber and Voice over IP, telephony technology innovation still woefully lags behind Web and mobile,” Boice said. “They’re still advertising on billboards and radio.”

Boice explains that in order for telecommunications developers to give a Web application voice or SMS capabilities, they have to master connecting them to copper or fiber wires. It's not cheap and it's not easy.

But Speek is designed uniquely. It is built on top of Node.js, a lightweight server-side version of JavaScript that’s commonly seen in gaming applications. It can hold a great deal of queries without taking up additional memory. Matt Turner, Speek’s Vice President of Engineering, dished to Orsini about how well Node.js works in telecommunications.

“With Node.js you have one connection with each person waiting for data, but in an idle sleep state until there’s data to transfer,” Turner said. “So when one person is listening, it doesn’t transmit that absence of data. It’s great at idling and saving space when there’s nothing for it to do.”




Edited by Rachel Ramsey
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