Since its inception, Digital Mail has maintained a strong focus on product-driven research-and-development.
After notching up a string of telecommunications world firsts in the 1990s we continued to innovate, pioneering the development of "virtual number" technology and the use of digital switches to create number-forwarding services with flexible web-based controls.
More recently, DML have focussed on the integration of inbound and outbound services, the integration of VoIP and PSTN telephony, and with putting the power of fully-fledged switchboards within reach of SME customers, in tesms of both affordability and ease-of-use.
Our research and development department is dedicated to creating and improving market-focused telecoms solutions, and to supporting our reseller network with innovative sales and marketing tools.
World firsts
Here are a selection of Digital Mail's technology world-firsts from the last 23 years. Contact us for the full list.
| Year | Innovation |
|---|---|
| 1992 | Hyperfax: a fax gateway designed to work over poor quality phone lines, by using adaptive packet length and session resume technology. |
| 1994 | Hyperfax fax-email gateway: receive faxes by email. |
| 1995 | Gen3: a PSTN Unified Messaging platform, featuring inbound call forwarding. |
| 1997 | Gen3 enhanced with personal (07) number and a web-based control (allowing diverts to be set). |
| 2000 | Voice-activated dialling (dmCalls). |
| 2003 | GenX switch, the successor to Gen3, introduced. Supports voice, fax and switchboard numbers – all controllable using xscript, an intermediate, XML-based switch control language. |
| 2010 | eComponents (rebrandable widget-style website plugins) allow affiliates to sell our entire product range. |
| 2012 | GenU ‘Universal Switch’ technology combines VoIP and PSTN telephony. |
| 2012 | dmSwitchboard12, based on the GenU platform, puts the power of switchboards within reach of SME customers, and includes an extremely flexible web-based ‘switchboard designer’, allowing fine-grained control over call-routing. |
| 2012 | All GenU call destinations feature called CLI delivery, as well as enhanced call information to PSTN. |
| 2014 | dmAnswers14, a configurable ‘front desk’ and ‘message desk’ answering and message-taking service, can be added to all GenU products. |
| 2014 | dmConsole, the web and smartphone based control for dmAnswers14, allows customers to change their call answering preferences at any time, even while on the move. |
| 2014 | Visual Voicemail delivers voicemail message notifications by email and SMS, with links to web-based streaming audio. |
Intellectual property
Digital Mail’s IP may have some useful defensive precedents in protecting against unfriendly patent-holders. While software patents are not legal in Europe there may be opportunities for patenting some of our IP elsewhere in the world.