Snom Technology GmbH is a German company which manufactures

Voice over Internet Protocol 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 ...

(VoIP)

telephones A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

, based on the

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and ...

standard

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 telep ...

(SIP). Snom's products are targeted at the small- to medium-sized business sector, home offices,

Internet service providers An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...

, carriers, and

original equipment manufacturer An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

s. The company, founded in 1996 and headquartered in

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, is a wholly owned subsidiary of VTech Holdings Limited, since 2016.

History

Snom was founded in 1997 in Berlin, Germany, by Christian Stredicke and Nicolas-Peter Pohland, former computer scientists at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1999, the company began producing VoIP telephones with the introduction of the ''snom 100'' model. By 2000, the company focussed on a vision to make interoperable components for enterprise communication systems. Instead of selling one telephony platform solution, the company emphasized stand-alone VoIP phones that are compatible across standards-based platforms from different vendors, which became possible with the introduction of the

(SIP) that had recently been standardized in the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and ...

(IETF). In 2001, Snom started a joint venture in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

, India. After some attempts to develop parts of the product in India, this office shifted to a focus in sales. In 2006, Snom opened an office in

North Andover, Massachusetts North Andover is an affluent town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the 2020 census the population was 30,915. History Native Americans inhabited what is now northeastern Massachusetts for thousands of years prior to European c ...

to enter the North American market. In 2008, Snom Italy SRL was founded, in 2009 Snom France SARL and in 2010 snom UK Ltd. Distributors network include companies in EMEA, CIS region, North America and Australia. In late 2016, Snom Technology AG was acquired by VTech Holdings Limited. The transaction was completed on 21 November 2016. The company is headed by Gernot Sagl, Chi Hoi Tong, Ka Hung Tong and Chi Keung Wong. Members of the

Supervisory Board In corporate governance, a governance board also known as council of delegates are chosen by the stockholders of a company to promote their interests through the governance of the company and to hire and fire the board of directors. In civil ...

include Allan Chi Yun Wong, King Fai Pang and Hon Kwong Leung.

Products

The snom 100 VoIP desk telephone was one of the first commercial voice-over-IP telephones in the telecommunication sector. The phone was initially based on the H.323 protocol, but was equipped with support for the

the following year, as SIP matured technologically, and gained international recognition in the IETF community. A followup model was the snom 105, which added a second Ethernet interface to permit chaining the telephone to a desk top computer to use only a single network drop cable at the office station. The snom 105 was followed by a series of 200-type desk telephones that featured a major dimensional redesign with a new handset and two sizes of LCD displays. Produced were the model 200 and 220. Another 100-series set, the snom 190, with the same form factor of the 200, concluded this technology level in the Fall of 2004, and paved the way for the 300-series released in Winter 2004. All of snom's

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

exists in the

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide ...

of its phones, and VoIP telephones support all common standards, as well as the latest technologies for traversal of network address translators (NAT),

telephone number mapping Telephone number mapping is a system of unifying the international telephone number system of the public switched telephone network with the Internet addressing and identification name spaces. Internationally, telephone numbers are systematicall ...

(ENUM), and virtual private networks (VPN). All snom phones are compatible with SIP-based telephone systems and system components, including

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

platforms such as

Asterisk The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vo ...

, SER, sipXecs, and IP-PBX systems offered by companies such as BroadSoft, Epygi (Quadro IP PBX), MetaSwitch, Pandora (Worksmart),

ADTRAN Adtran, Inc. is a leading global provider of open, disaggregated networking and communications solutions. Adtran Is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. The company is ISO 9001 and TL9000, ISO 14001, and ISO 27001 certified. History ADTRAN ...

(NetVanta UC Server), pbxnsip, Sylantro, Sangoma Technologies Corporation, and others. Snom's phones include security features based on the two VoIP security standards SIPs (RFC 5246) and SRTP (RFC 3711). Some devices also support virtual private networking and wireless encryption ( WEP/

WPA WPA may refer to: Computing *Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard *Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing *Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada * Windows Performance Ana ...

Industry recognition

* TMC Labs 2003 Innovation Awards * Internet Telephony 2006 Excellence Award * Internet Telephony's 2006 Top 100 Voices in IP Communication- Dr. Christian Stredicke * Pulver 100, 2007

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.snom.com/ Electronics companies of Germany VoIP companies Telecommunications companies of Germany