Neutral Tandem Inc. is a company literally dreamed up at and worked on
at Ron Gavillet’s kitchen counter.
Like many new ideas, necessity was the
mother of this invention. Gavillet was
struggling to make a
business model for a
new telecom company work, but one of
the biggest obstacles was the cost
and inefficiency of
using AT&T tandems
for exchanging calls
with other carriers.
Worse yet, AT&T and
others didn’t like
competitors using
their tandems, so
they made service as
unattractive and inefficient as possible.
Gavillet decided to
build a better “neutral” tandem method
for carriers to exchange calls.
With the support
of investors, Neutral
Tandem was born.
Carriers in Chicago swarmed the company
for its services and historic growth rates
were set, with Robert Junkroski and Rian
Wren helping to lead the young company.
Today, Neutral Tandem switches nearly
3 billion minutes of traffic a month. It is
connected to nearly 700 carrier switches
and operates in 40 markets. It has become not just a critical component of the
nation’s telecom infrastructure, but the
redundancy it has built has helped fortify
that infrastructure for homeland security
purposes.
The company continues to develop
unique services and options for its carrier
customers.
HOW TO REACH: Neutral Tandem Inc.,www.neutraltandem.com or (312) 384-8040