What Sangoma Does
Sangoma Technologies is a Canadian publicly listed company (TSX: STC) that develops and sells unified communications solutions built on open-source foundations. Sangoma is the primary developer and corporate sponsor of both the Asterisk open-source telephony engine and FreePBX, the open-source PBX management interface. The company acquired Digium (the original creator of Asterisk) in 2018, consolidating ownership of the world’s most widely deployed open-source communications platform.
Open-Source Foundations: Asterisk and FreePBX
Asterisk is an open-source communications framework that powers a significant portion of the world’s telephony infrastructure — from small business phone systems to carrier-grade platforms. It functions as a telephony engine capable of handling call routing, voicemail, conferencing, IVR, and protocol conversion. FreePBX is the graphical management layer built on top of Asterisk, providing a web-based interface for configuring and managing the PBX without command-line expertise.
Both projects remain distributed under open-source licences (GPL), meaning the code is freely available for anyone to use, modify, and deploy. Sangoma monetises through commercial modules, support contracts, hardware sales, and its hosted PBXact/Switchvox platforms that package Asterisk and FreePBX into supported commercial products.
Sangoma GenAI Platform
In January 2025, Sangoma unveiled its GenAI platform, introducing AI-powered capabilities into its communications stack. Key features include enhanced Conversational IVR that uses generative AI to handle customer interactions more naturally than traditional touch-tone menus, and Sangoma Scribe, an AI-driven transcription and summarisation tool that has seen rapid adoption among users. These AI capabilities are being integrated into both the commercial Sangoma platforms and, in some cases, made available to the open-source community through the Asterisk voice engine.
AstriCon, the annual Asterisk community conference now in its 20th year, continues to serve as the primary showcase for AI integration into the Asterisk platform.
Hardware and Connectivity Products
Sangoma also manufactures telephony interface cards, SIP phones, and VoIP gateways. The telephony cards (formerly Digium-branded) connect Asterisk servers to PSTN lines — analogue (FXO/FXS) and digital (E1/T1/PRI). Sangoma’s SIP phone range and session border controllers round out a product portfolio that spans the full communications stack from infrastructure to endpoints.
Why SA Resellers Should Know About Sangoma
Asterisk and FreePBX underpin a meaningful portion of South Africa’s VoIP infrastructure — many local VoIP service providers built their platforms on Asterisk, and FreePBX is widely deployed in SA businesses as a cost-effective PBX solution. Sangoma’s position as the corporate steward of these projects means that the company’s product decisions directly affect the SA open-source telephony ecosystem. The GenAI IVR and Scribe capabilities are particularly relevant for SA resellers looking to add AI-powered features to existing FreePBX/Asterisk deployments without migrating to an entirely new platform.
About the Author
Mechelle Gindra
Mechelle Gindra is the managing editor and lead content strategist at Telecoms-Channel, South Africa's dedicated intelligence platform for telecoms resellers, ICT distributors, and channel partners. She oversees the editorial team's AI-assisted content production pipeline, ensuring vendor news, market analysis, and regulatory updates are accurate, timely, and actionable for the SA telecoms channel community. With deep expertise in the South African telecoms reseller ecosystem, Mechelle directs coverage of vendor partner programmes, ICASA regulatory developments, wholesale market dynamics, and channel business strategy. She is responsible for maintaining Telecoms-Channel's editorial standards, fact-checking processes, and corrections policy.
