At Phone.com, we’re proud to have been part of the conversation at the 2025 IT Expo Tech Super Show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. During the event, our CEO Ari Rabban sat down with Rich Tarani to discuss the evolution of unified communications, our mission to empower small businesses, and what’s coming next in the world of UCaaS.
In this exclusive interview, Ari reflects on nearly two decades of innovation, including being one of the first HIPAA-compliant providers, opening our platform via API, and now integrating AI-powered tools to serve businesses with fewer than 20 employees. He also shares thoughts on industry trends, mobility, regulatory changes, and why small businesses still need big-league tools—simplified.
Watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tdewi7CyI4
Interview Transcript
Rich Tarani:
Hey, it’s Rich Tarani. Thanks for watching. We’re at the IT Expo Tech Super Show. The year’s 2025. We’re here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On our program is Ari Rabban. He’s the CEO of Phone.com. Ari, welcome back to the show. How are you?
Ari Rabban:
I’m good, thank you. Always great to be here.
Rich Tarani:
And it’s great to have you. You guys are one of the original unified communications as a service providers going back years and years. I mean, you had the foresight to register Phone.com. I mean, so smart. Tell us a little bit about the company. What should people out there know if they haven’t heard of you?
Ari Rabban:
Well, Phone.com is a service provider that focuses on needs of small business. I guess we call us UCaaS. The service is basically offered to any customer in the U.S. Mainly, we acquire customers online. We do have a channel program, so IT firms would register, sign up their customers, but we’d provide the support and all. We’re going 18 years now. I mean, obviously, we’re going with IT Expo. We’ve been in the previous company, VocalTech, which was from the very, very early days.
Rich Tarani:
Yeah, you’ve been in the communication space, voice over IP space, since the inception.
Ari Rabban:
Yes, yes. So we’ve seen a lot and can comment about the changes, always believe in the future. I mean, the industry at large always said, you reach the limit, but there’s always the next phase. And that’s certainly how we still feel. I mean, the energy is there. Customers are still coming. We’re all competing, but it’s healthy.
Rich Tarani:
Yeah, I remember in the early days, you were one of the first companies to deal with compliancy. You became a HIPAA-compliant provider, which was great for medical companies. Then I remember you opened up your solution. So there was API access, allowing other solutions to interoperate with you. So you’ve really been leading the way, certainly ahead of the curve in this space. What’s new and exciting? What are you doing next?
Ari Rabban:
I think we have been in the forefront. We bite what we can chew. I mean, we know our size compared to some of the really big companies, but we are always looking at something new so that we don’t just stay kind of the same. To say AI is—kind of everyone who comes will say AI. I don’t even like the word AI because it’s kind of overused. And our customers, small businesses, don’t really need to know it’s AI. They need to know that they have a new tool that can help them with productivity essentially, etc.
So we absolutely are evaluating different products. I think we’re one of the early ones who put a service that is a receptionist service that is based on AI. We take appointments for you and set schedules, transfer calls. And it’s learning and it’s improving and answering questions, etc.
Ari Rabban (continued):
Solutions that, for us, it has to fit—call it plug-and-play—for a small business, a really small business, kind of under 20 employees, under 10 employees. There’s no IT to ask. It’s our customer service they can ask, but that’s it.
Rich Tarani:
That’s fantastic. And so are there trends you’ve been seeing in the market, just in communications in general or just companies over the last year?
Ari Rabban:
I think the opportunities, again, are there. I think the last year, there was some fear—if I may say so—some change, fear, Microsoft Teams, Zoom. There’s no need to fear, I think. You need to compete and be there. Also, again, depends which company and who you are.
I actually think that some regulatory changes—some are bad. Some could be good. With AI, it’s another area. Obviously, we’re all suffering from fraud, both as an industry and also the customers—the real good customers—and how we can help them and optimize the solutions. So we kind of move that—it’s more than noise aside. So that’s certainly out there, and it takes a lot of attention. Maybe more defense than offense, but it’s very much needed. So you need to work on that.
Rich Tarani:
Great. What else should we know?
Ari Rabban:
Again, for us, the way we look at things—customers, small business—you always say your customer knows what they want, always trust the customer. Sometimes you need to show what’s new. We want to bring tools that are available for larger organizations so that a small company can use it in a simple way.
Right now, we also feel that mobility is something that we all kind of… I think it’s taken for granted and it’s always there, but there’s more we can do and integrating UCaaS and mobility can be done better. And that’s another area that you should expect to hear from us soon.
Rich Tarani:
Fantastic. And people can find you at phone.com.
Ari Rabban:
That’s very easy to find us. Yes. www.phone.com.
Rich Tarani:
Thank you.
Ari Rabban:
Thank you.
Ready to modernize your small business communications? Learn more at www.phone.com, or watch the full interview with Ari Rabban here on YouTube.