General Bandwidth announces Charlie Vogt as President and Chief Executive Officer
Austin, TX – September 20, 2004 – General Bandwidth, a leading Voice Over IP (VoIP) telecommunications equipment manufacturer, today announced that Charlie Vogt has been named as President and Chief Executive Officer succeeding Brendon Mills, who is stepping down as President and CEO of the company.
Vogt joins General Bandwidth with nearly 20 years of senior management experience in the telecommunications industry, most recently leading the restart and rapid growth of next-generation Class 5 packet switch developer, Taqua Inc. Over the two years that he was President and CEO, Vogt refocused Taqua’s business objectives and streamlined its sales, marketing, product development and operations. During that time, Taqua successfully established itself as the next-generation Class 5 packet switching market leader by exponentially growing the customer base from 15 customers in June 2002 to over 110 customers by April 2004. Taqua was acquired by Tekelec in April 2004.
“Charlie has a long history of success in the telecommunications industry and we are thrilled that he is joining the General Bandwidth team,” said Leland Murphy, a member of General Bandwidth’s board of directors and partner with Trellis Partners. “Charlie has proven that he can take late stage start up companies to the next level. General Bandwidth is well positioned with its carrier-class VoIP product offerings, and we are confident that he will broaden the company’s market position and prepare General Bandwidth for the next stage of its corporate development.”
Vogt is succeeding Brendon Mills, General Bandwidth’s founding President and CEO. Mills founded General Bandwidth in 1999 and led the company’s pioneering efforts in the packet voice equipment industry. During the five years at General Bandwidth, Brendon guided the company through one of the telecommunication industry’s most tumultuous times, successfully raising $180 million in private capital, developing an award winning VoIP gateway, securing eight patents and several marquis customers in the burgeoning broadband voice industry.
I am very excited to be joining the General Bandwidth team,” said Charlie Vogt, President and CEO of General Bandwidth. “The G6® platform is the industry’s most robust, feature-complete media gateway (access/trunk). In addition, the G6 platform is NEBS level 3 and OSMINE certified as well as PacketCableTM qualified by CableLabs®. As the industry evolves and migrates from circuit-to-packet, General Bandwidth is well positioned globally as the media gateway market segment will account for a significant amount of the worldwide spending over the next 10 years.”
Prior to the successful turnaround of Taqua, Charlie was part of the executive management team with Santera Systems, a Plano,Texas-based developer of a next-generation voice switching technology that was acquired by Tekelec. Prior to Taqua and Santera Systems, Vogt held senior management positions at Accelerated Networks, Ascend Communications, ADTRAN, Motorola and IBM. Vogt was part of the executive management team with Taqua, Santera Systems and Accelerated Networks which raised more than $190M in public and private capital. During Vogt’s tenure with ADTRAN, Ascend Communications and Accelerated Networks, these companies grew from start-ups to publicly traded companies, while Santera Systems and Taqua were both acquired.
Vogt holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Computer Science from Saint Louis University.
About General Bandwidth
General Bandwidth provides “Solutions for a VoIP WorldTM” with deployments across more than 40 domestic and international customers while enabling applications such asPacketCable™ cable telephony, VoIP Business Services, and SIP-based IP Centrex. General Bandwidth’s flagship product, the G6® VoIP Media Gateway, delivers high quality, full-featured voice services over a wide variety of packet architectures, including hybrid fiber coax (HFC), FTTP, DSL, and T1. With the capability to simultaneously support voice services from next generation softswitches and Class 5 switches, the G6 platform is a highly scalable, fully redundant, and very flexible service migration platform from which new voice and media features can be deployed. For more information, refer to www.genband.com.
Contact:
General Bandwidth
Tabitha Bailey
+1.805.241.2532
Tabitha.bailey@genband.com
: G6 and General Bandwidth are registered trademarks of General Bandwidth Inc. CableLabs and PacketCable are trademarks of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.
