BT Reverses Web21c into Ribbit

In a surprise move, British Telecom have announced that their existing Web21c telephony tools will be folded into BT's recently acquired Ribbit. Web21c is a multi-language toolkit that allows developers to create mashups using BT's core services, for example SMS, location and call control. Silicon Valley-based Ribbit, which became part of BT in July, provides Flex-based call control, allowing in-browser apps to do voice calling without need of a separate softphone application.

JP Rangaswami, MD Strategy & Innovation, BT Design :

Complementing the server side tools provided by our Web21C SDK, Ribbit brings a host of client side features that will enable you to bring together voice calling and Web 2.0 experiences, turning voice into a rich feature that can be added to any application, on any device.

Commentators generally expected that Ribbit would become part of the Web21c toolkit, rather than the other way around. But it seems that from October 10th, apps wanting a RESTful API to telephony services will be accessing them via Ribbit rather than the Web21c interface they have used in the past.

Reply from andyk on Mar 18, 2010 - 12:25 PM

Has anyone here joined Ribbit and explored it?

I signed up and played with the voicemail and call forwarding system a bit, but haven't really looked yet at what else there is.

It seems to be free while in beta, or they haven't asked me for money anyway, but I wonder what happens when it becomes chargeable

Reply from dean on Mar 18, 2010 - 02:17 PM

I'm using it on my mobile for voice to text (and visual voicemail).

It's not bad - a bit clunky, but I'm sure they'll refine it. I have kept it, clunkiness and all, because it's genuinely useful and saves me a lot of time (I don't have to call my VM and play messages sequentially).

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