A new wave of European entrepreneurs are about to start revolutionizing how we use our phones. Today, the Twilio voice API becomes available in Austria, Denmark, France, Ireland and Poland. Additionally, Twilio’s SMS API now supports UK phone numbers. These APIs allow developers to build apps that can programatically send and receive calls and texts.
Specifically, the voice API allows developers to accept calls from local numbers and trigger changes in their app, as well as call locals numbers and play them recorded messages. The voice API can be used to set up conference calls, build interactive phone menus, launch scalable call centers, issue confirmation calls, and more.
In October, Twilio announced plans to conquer 20 European countries in a year starting with the UK. A $17 million Series C round last month gave it the funding to ready it sales and marketing teams for the push.
Twilio product manager Thomas Schiavone tells me “There’s pent-up demand. We have over 2,000 thousand developers overseas registered for our private beta. People are telling us ‘we want this for our country, we have ideas!'”
Several prominent startups including Hulu and Zendesk are already provisioning local phones in international markets. For example, Airbnb uses Twilio to provide 24/7 phone support for guests and hosts worldwide.
Twilio’s CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson tell me “We’re bringing some of the aspects of Silicon Valley to the markets we’re coming to.” Entrepreneurs will be able to use Twilio’s APIs to start companies and sweep away telecommunication inefficiencies, both locally and abroad. Lawson concludes, “You can write an app once and use it anywhere. It’s an API with global reach.”
[Image Credit: Shutterstock – Decks]