Jeff Pulver

Jeff Pulver is an American Internet entrepreneur known for his work as founder and chief executive of pulver.com and co-founder of Free World Dialup, Vonage, and Zula (app). Pulver has been called a Voice over Internet Protocol pioneer, and has written extensively on VoIP telephony, and the need to develop an alternative to government regulation of its applications layer.

Jeff Pulver grew up in Kings Point, New York, and was graduated from Great Neck North High School in 1980. While working at a Long Island accounting firm, Pulver founded Spreadsheet Solutions Corp. to market add-ins for Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel.

A licensed amateur radio operator since the age of 12, Pulver holds the call sign WA2BOT, and credits the hobby with sparking his interest in internet technology, saying, "it was amateur radio that unlocked [my] connection to voice over IP”.

He became interested in Internet telephony in 1995, when he was as a systems administrator at Cantor Fitzgerald. Pulver was co-founder and minority shareholder in Vonage, a VoIP provider based in Edison, New Jersey. Pulver invented the CellSocket, a device to make and receive cellular voice calls via a standard phone, and was listed as a BusinessWeek Tech Guru in 2003. Pulver is the chief writer of what is referred to as the Pulver Order, which was adopted in 2004 by the Federal Communications Commission as the first FCC ruling regarding Internet Protocol (IP) communications. The order ruled that computer-to-computer VoIP is not a telecommunications service. He coined the term purple minutes to describe value-added IP network traffic. Considered one of the leading experts in the field of streaming audio and video technologies, Pulver has been called a pioneer in VoIP telephony. He was profiled in 2006 by The Wall Street Journal, discussing his visions about both voice and video communications via the Internet.

In 1995 he coined the term VON to stand for Voice/Video on the Net and continues today to contribute words to both the telecom and social media vernacular. From 1997 to 2008 he produced and hosted the VON Conferences. VON conferences in the US and Europe helped create and coalesce ecosystems around VoIP, online communications.

He has also been named as "a leading thought-leader on the Real-Time Web", and refers to himself as “a habitual entrepreneur who likes to start Internet communications companies.”

Pulver organizes a conference series focusing on Twitter activities and strategy called 140 Characters Conference that is held in various locations around the world. He has also hosted events that bring people to the Caicos islands to "see the night sky, learn about astronomy and talk about the future". Pulver is also an investor in startup companies. Pulver resides in Great Neck, New York, and has twin sons Dylan and Jake. He also spent time in Remsenburg, New York.

His most recent set of Internet development conferences is called MoNage, “The Business of Messaging” - messaging over the network, with the first in Boston (September 20-22, 2016), and others to follow.

• Network2.tv is a guide to TV on the Internet founded by Pulver.

• Shonfeld, Eric. "Pulver Launches An Online TV Guide In The Form of a Cube (PrimeTimeRewindTV)". Tech Crunch. AOL TV. Retrieved 10 February 2012.