Voiceboard to Add Staff as Customer List Grows

Gregory Peacock, president of the Voiceboard Corp. of Ventura, has the kind of problem most corporate leaders would love to have.

“We have signed quite a large number of projects with major firms,” said Peacock, whose company supplies advanced hardware to telecommunications system integrators. “In order to execute the projects, we have to add staff, facilities, et cetera.”

Voiceboard’s Mediapro line, which integrates telecommunications networks, digital signal processing devices, switching systems and network signaling systems through a single plug-in module, is in high demand.

To meet that demand, and to take advantage of the market’s potential, Voiceboard issued a $7-million private stock offering. Current investors have already committed to the entire amount, Peacock said.

“[Mediapro] is very high capacity, high reliability,” Peacock said. “Everything our customers need is in one module. It allows [original equipment manufacturers] to design their next generation based on our products.”

The company’s growing list of high-profile customers includes telecommunications and military leaders such as Lucent Technologies, Nortel, GTE, Rockwell, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin and Motorola.

Voiceboard officials anticipate sales to these and other systems integrators will increase from $9 million in 1998 to $37 million in 1999 and $53 million in 2000.

Peacock said the increased demand for Voiceboard’s technology has been fueled by the deregulation of the global telecommunications market. More international markets are now open to U.S. companies, creating greater need among those companies for outside suppliers, such as Voiceboard.

If the U.S. companies are to get their product to the market in a timely manner, Peacock said, they will need the outside help. “They no longer have the necessary in-house experts,” he said.

The Mediapro technology should be in demand for some time to come, Peacock said.

“The functionality requirement isn’t going to go away for a long time, similar to what happened in the PC world,” he said. “We are committed to continually updating the product.”

Another leading product for Voiceboard is an automated weather-announcement system used in about 200 airport control towers. The system continually updates weather changes for pilots. The company also manufactures systems used by U.S. Navy and Air Force training schools to create video images of simulated flights.

Voiceboard has 18 employees, with staffing expected to increase to about 50 over the next six months.