Alteva’s history begins in 1996 when former college roommates, William Bumbernick and Mark Marquez, launched a technology consulting and remote monitoring company. The fledgling company landed a major pharmaceutical client in 2000 and developed a proprietary remote monitoring system for eight of its worldwide locations. As the next logical step, the company transitioned into managed services, for Microsoft products, security assessment and outsourced CIO management functions.
That year, one of Alteva’s newest clients was installing a hybrid (TDM/VoIP) phone system. The client asked Alteva to serve as the project lead for the install. In 2000, VoIP was just viewed as experimental technology, not as a trusted voice application the way it is seen today. Since Alteva managed this client’s data functions, adding phones was a logical additional service.
This experience was the catalyst for Alteva’s implementation of a full R&D program between 2000 and 2002 on packet-based voice technologies. Alteva became standardized on a BroadSoft switching platform in 2003, becoming one of the first hosted VoIP service providers in the world. Since its inception, Alteva built its solutions around the needs of the enterprise level client.
In 2003, VoIP had become the sole focus of the company and Bumbernick brought Louis Hayner aboard to serve as Alteva’s Director of Sales. Hayner brought ten years of experience in the telecom industry to Alteva, and is currently the Chief Sales Officer.
In 2006, the company enlisted David Cuthbert to head up Alteva’s Operations Department. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former Naval Special Operations Officer, in this capacity he led underwater and land bomb disposal teams domestically and abroad. In 2003, he was assigned the leadership responsibility of the Navy’s leading nuclear weapon casualty response detachment. His leadership, process innovation, and mission accomplishment earned him several high level unit and individual awards. Cuthbert has since developed scalable processes through automation and employee development to support Alteva’s tremendous growth.
Between 2007 and 2009, Alteva grew its employee base by more than 300 percent, and continued its hiring and company expansion to meet the needs of its rapidly growing business in the years to come.
In 2010, Alteva announced the appointment of David Cuthbert as CEO, enabling Chairman and former CEO, William Bumbernick, to focus on the innovative direction of the company as Chief Innovation Officer.
Alteva is consistently ahead of its competition, announcing new products and capabilities before it becomes mainstream, and has partnered with other service providers to develop HD voice, video IP Peering capabilities, and new applications designed to meet the needs of the enterprise level client. Having conquered one of the fasting growing and hotly contested market segments, Alteva always has its eye on the future. As the company enters the second decade of the new millennium, Alteva is now provisioning international phone numbers and offering a complete Unified Communications solution, supplying the voice component in conjunction with Microsoft and Broadsoft.
Over the years, Alteva’s executives have become well-respected thought leaders within the telephony industry, speaking on topics including Voice 2.0, IP Peering, Cloud Communications, VoIP, Unified Communications, Disaster Recovery and HD Voice at conferences including ITEXPO, Channel Partners Conference & Expo, Cloud Communications Summit, Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC), Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, ACUTA, VON, Parallels Summit, and Supercomm, among others.
In August 2011, Alteva was acquired by WVT Communications Group (WVT CG) (NYSE: WVT), a full service cloud communications company. Following the closing, Alteva immediately began integrating its operations with WVT CG’s existing cloud communications group (USA Datanet, a pioneer in VoIP and full-service and nationwide telecommunications company). This strategic move helped the newly merged company significantly strengthen its CLEC business, and expand its cloud strategy for unified communications and hosted applications for small, medium and large enterprise customers. Today, the executive teams of Alteva and WVT CG have been integrated and jointly manage the merged operation under the Alteva name. David Cuthbert now serves as President and COO of Alteva. Alteva founder, William Bumbernick, continues to contribute as Chief Innovation Consultant to Alteva.
The combination of a steady cash flow to fund future acquisitions, along with Alteva’s strong channel, superior sales and marketing acumen, and an efficient platform for dispensing cost-effective hosted communications services allows the company to be well positioned for future growth in its revenues, profitability and market share in one of the communications industry’s fastest growing segments.
