Obihai Technology is a company that manufactures

analog telephone adapter An analog telephone adapter (ATA) is a device for connecting traditional analog telephones, fax machines, and similar customer-premises devices to a digital telephone system or a voice over IP telephony network. An ATA is often built into a sma ...

s that support

Session Initiation Protocol The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telepho ...

(SIP),

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), it ...

, and

Google Voice Google Voice is a telephone service that provides a U.S. phone number to Google Account customers in the U.S. and Google Workspace (G Suite by October 2020) customers in Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switz ...

compatible

Internet telephony Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

History

The company, based in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

, was founded in 2010 by Jan Fandrianto and Sam Sin, the same people who introduced the first analog telephone adaptors as

Komodo Technology Komodo Technology is a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company based in the United States. It was acquired by Cisco Systems on July 25, 2000, for US$175 million in stock. It was a leading company in internet and enterprise telephone technolo ...

in the 1990s and formed

Sipura Technology Sipura Technology, Inc. was a Voice over IP (VoIP) startup company based in San Jose, California founded in 2003 with its siblings VideoCore and Komodo Technology, Inc. Sipura made VoIP telephone adapters including the Sipura Phone Adapter SPA21 ...

in 2002. Both prior companies were acquired by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

, in 2000 and 2005 respectively, and integrated into that company's

Linksys Linksys is an American brand of data networking hardware products mainly sold to home users and small businesses. It was founded in 1988 by the couple Victor and Janie Tsao, both Taiwanese immigrants to the United States. Linksys products incl ...

division. Linksys was sold to

Belkin Belkin is an American consumer electronics and networking company headquartered in El Segundo, California. It produces mobile and computer connectivity devices and peripherals for consumer and commercial use. These include wireless chargers, po ...

in 2013. In January 2018,

Polycom Poly, formerly Polycom, a part of HP Inc., is an American multinational corporation that develops video, voice and content collaboration and communication technology. Polycom was co-founded in 1990 by Brian L Hinman and Jeffrey Rodman. In 2018 ...

acquired Obihai. Polycom "expects to add more cloud-based capabilities and Analog Terminal Adapter solutions to its solutions portfolio". The deal is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2018. In 2022, Poly was sold onwards to HP.

Products

Obihai is notable primarily for manufacturing

s that connect standard

push-button telephone The push-button telephone is a telephone that has buttons or keys for dialing a telephone number, in contrast to having a rotary dial as in earlier telephone instruments. Western Electric experimented as early as 1941 with methods of using mec ...

s to the

service using a wired or

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

broadband Internet In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

connection. As Google's

voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of speech, voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms In ...

service is inexpensive (and, in some cases, free), hardware that allows the service to replace conventional landline telephony reduces costs to subscribers. The hardware comes in various configurations, including OBi100 (1 x FXS, to connect to one phone), OBi110 (1 FXS + 1 FXO, to connect to one phone and one conventional outside line), OBi200 (1 x FXS, 4x VoIP services,

T.38 T.38 is an ITU recommendation for allowing transmission of fax over IP networks (FoIP) in real time. History The T.38 fax relay standard was devised in 1998 as a way to permit faxes to be transported across IP networks between existing Group ...

, USB, i-fi, BT optional extra and OBi202 (2 FXS + LAN with T.38, USB, wi-fi optional extra). The devices, distributed through US vendors such as

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

Newegg Newegg Commerce, Inc. is an American online retailer of items including computer hardware and consumer electronics. It is based in City of Industry, California. It is majority-owned by Liaison Interactive, a multinational technology company. Hi ...

and

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

, are normally sold unlocked and unconfigured. The user may configure logins for multiple, simultaneous providers. Obi200 2

Obihai operates its own preconfigured OBiTALK VoIP service to allow direct calling between its branded devices (using **9 and a nine-digit serial number), as well as a companion OBiON softphone app for Android and iPhone. There is also a Service Provider Template for various individual providers (such as Anveo and Phone Power) built into the current generation of devices; earlier devices used an online wizard to automate the configuration process. Google Voice support, a popular feature due to the low cost of service, was temporarily broken when that service dropped XMPP support in May 2014 and officially restored in September 2014. It was again broken at the end of 2017 for OBi100/110 devices due to update of Google certificates and previous end of support of Obi100/Obi100 in 2016. Later old certificates were temporary restored back by Google and service stopped again in May 2018. At the same time a community found a way to put a correct new Google certificates into Obi100/110 even without vendor support and describes it in www.obifirmware.com (anonymously).

References

{{reflist VoIP hardware VoIP software Networking companies of the United States VoIP companies of the United States

History

Products

See also

References