Taking wholesale voice services to the next level through rapid development of value-added services. Now telephone networks offer us a new world of opportunities again. Co-sponsored feature: BT

Ribbit’s PaaS is similar to a cloud computing model. It includes workflow facilities for application design and development, testing, deployment and hosting. It also offers application services such as team collaboration, web service integration, security, and facilitation of the developer community. These services are available as an integrated solution over the web. (BYON: “Bring your own network”) 
 
 
 

Telephone companies have connected communities for more than a century. Early networks were built around single services and priced on the assumption of scarcity — according to usage and distance — with guaranteed rates of return.
Now the dynamics have changed. Legacy networks with their circuit-based pricing models have given way to global IP networks. Today we send messages from Paris to Lagos at a nominal charge over shared packet-based networks. Circuit-based pricing is going the way of the rotary dial phone.
Regulations that historically helped carriers’ establish their status in local service areas continue to change to encourage competition for the benefit of end customers. A look at app store models shows us how new customer requirements and customer choice are redefining the economics of communications. In terms of influence on differentiation and margins, applications and platforms increasingly overshadow the networks that support them.
If carriers are going to drive usage and return on their network investments, they must provide compelling services and applications that offer customer choice.
Many carriers, including BT, are investing heavily to upgrade wireline and wireless networks from copper to fibre and to deploy state-of-the-art routing and switching technologies so they can provide more competitive offers and improve service. While declining ARPU and alternative off-network technologies start to threaten to undermine the business of wireless carriers, innovative content and application providers are realizing new revenue streams over the wireless carriers’ networks. In parallel, broadband wireline is increasingly commoditised.
Carriers must do more than invest in the network. To differentiate themselves in the high-margin application space they can innovate to attract subscribers who currently look to new entrants for new services. These entrants often have a disruptive impact on the business models of established infrastructure providers, and their offerings may sometimes lack vital security, integrity and quality assurance.
This situation presents operators a unique opportunity for differentiation. If they offer compelling new applications to drive usage and return on their network investments, their reach and resources uniquely position them to participate in the market. This market of feature-rich and communication-enabled subscriber applications has already begun to bear fruit among the leading players in the internet and computing industries.
And carriers can bring some things to the table that most entrants lack in their portfolios: decades of experience providing high-availability platforms, integrity and security. Most of all, their customers trust them.
BT’s Global Telecom Markets (GTM) plans to enhance its portfolio of wholesale solutions to help operators, communication providers and carriers make the most of this opportunity by bringing BT’s Ribbit capabilities to international wholesale customers. Ribbit’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) allows carriers to join the trend toward new applications and monetise their participation in it by leveraging innovation.
The unique Ribbit platform provides an open programming environment, applications, new developer communities, and development services that make it possible for carriers to derive new value from their current networks.
Looking at the market, as new communication features are integrated with growing global social networks, the pace of new product introductions gains speed. The impact is profound and a new generation of products, services and devices is altering the way individuals and organizations communicate.
Quick access to development resources that accelerate their participation in this new ecosystem can help carriers respond swiftly to the rapid changes influencing the future of their industry. They need partners and platforms that attract fast new development and allow creation of voice-enabled applications and workflows.
Ribbit is such a platform. It seamlessly bridges the gaps between multiple networks and between online and offline devices. It can enable meaningful new communication solutions for consumers and businesses and dramatically change the way we view communications.
Ribbit’s programmable communication services platform and applications align with carrier networks. As they allow developers to integrate voice and communications in new and more creative ways, they allow carriers’ to provide the communications solutions that customers want and need. In this way they help carriers differentiate and extend their offerings, decrease customer churn and add incremental revenue.
The Ribbit platform allows developers to embed voice and communications in high-value business and personal processes. With Ribbit, software applications can be communication-enabled, turning voice into a rich feature that adds value to any application, on any device.
Ribbit has already attracted thousands of web developers to quickly create such rich telephony applications. Its extensive set of communications APIs enables global development communities to build and share applications and services without having to use proprietary platforms or telecom-specific protocols.
Developers can now integrate, monetise and personalise voice for private businesses, global enterprises, vertical markets and the masses, bringing to life new ideas, new experiences and new business models.
Ribbit gives carriers what they need to seize the opportunity in the new communications ecosystem by delivering high-value voice-enabled applications and workflows. It empowers them to attract and retain customers by providing the broadest choice of applications and services — which leverage the carrier’s own network infrastructure.
Ribbit’s APIs enable developers to offer telecom features without having to embed software into the devices’ clients. The communication platform is accessible over web pages, IM, Flash phones, mobile phones, SIP phones and black phones. In this way, Ribbit provides very large numbers of developers with ready access to previously inaccessible communication resources that help them to communication-enable new applications and services.
Carriers can use the Ribbit platform themselves to quickly build communication-enabled workflows and applications tailored to their customers’ business processes. Because the Ribbit platform is offered as a platform-as-a-service, the entire application infrastructure resides in a cloud outside of the carrier’s facilities.
With Ribbit, delivered via BT’s global network, BT addresses the network and platform issues that until now have held back developers and carriers from creating and deploying rich-media communications systems. This approach represents an innovative and effective way to solve the major challenges associated with delivering synchronous, real-time, rich-media communications.
The Ribbit platform-as-a-service uses the cloud computing model to enable the rapid creation, execution, and delivery of new services. Its architecture permits interconnection with multiple carriers, allowing communications and applications to transcend networks, devices and technologies. No software downloads or installations are required. The result is rapid proof-of-concept and time-to-market with reduced development costs for applications.
Ribbit can also work as an innovative and effective software development kit for BT’s Interoperability framework as the platform-as-a-service is connected to BT’s IP eXchange.
Thus Ribbit can give a head start to all value-added service providers who plan to leverage BT’s IP eXchange with its cross-network and multi-provider capabilities. This paves the way for traditional voice services to evolve by allowing seamless IP and TDM interoperation.
In summary, GTM intends to combine IP Interoperability and the Ribbit network-provisioned IP telephone services platform to help carriers reap the benefits of moving up the value chain in telecommunications. Operators are well positioned to help their customers get the most from new communication services and applications — with integrity, security and trust. GTM aims to support its wholesale customers to take Ribbit successfully to market and to thrive in the IP space. GTB

About Ribbit

Ribbit was created to bring Silicon Valley processes, business models and application innovation to the telephony industry, by working from the ground up, focusing on the team, technology and business model.
Ribbit is changing how we think about communications by empowering thousands of developers to quickly create rich telephony applications and put them into the hands of millions of consumers and businesses. The future of communications runs on open platforms, and armies of developers will bring it to us by rapidly building and deploying fresh, innovative communication solutions that align with 21st-century needs.
Founded in 2005, Ribbit is a subsidiary of BT.