Twilio expands to more 20 countries with low-latency strategy

Cloud communications provider Twilio has grown rapidly since its founding in 2009 to the point where its solutions are now available on six continents.

Announced amid the second annual TwilioCon expo in San Francisco on Wednesday, Twilio's API for international voice and SMS has been rolled out to 20 additional countries.

Twilio's motivation for a single API such as this available worldwide is to overcome traditional geographical barriers that often hinder telecommunications technologies.

Lisa Weitekamp, an associate product manager at Twilio, described this process in a statement as an "ambitious" expansion:

We have established strong relationships with providers around the world to provide the highest quality possible. Before launching in each country, we do extensive investigation on local regulations and restrictions, and we make sure that we have a process that makes it easy for our customers to build incredible apps and services, regardless of their country.

One of the ways that Twilio is attempting to expand its reach faster is through a "low-latency" approach in which calls and messages are routed through a network of strategically-located data centers worldwide.

This, in turn, is supposed to deliver calls and messages faster, improving the end user's experience with the intention of encouraging mobile businesses to use the Twilio API.

To get an idea of how the Twilio API touches consumers, an example is the car sharing service Uber, which connects customers with town car and SUV drivers in cities nationwide through a mobile app.

Quite simply, the Uber mobile app uses the Twilio API to notify customers via text message that the driver is on the way and when the driver is near the pickup point.