BT unveils Google Voice alternative, develops voice platform for SaaS

Ribbit, owned by BT (British Telecom) announced the new service Ribbit Mobile, that provides personal virtual PBX and can be linked to your existing mobile number. Ribbit Mobile's features are very similar to Google Voice - it can forward incoming calls according to your settings, send/receive sms, voicemail and transcribe voicemail. Unlike Google Voice, that only works with phone-company phones and SIP, Ribbit can also connect to Skype. And its main advantage is Web integration. Ribbit Mobile allows to call and receive calls in the web interface or using the widget. That is what Google Voice can't do.

Though the new service looks very ambitious, it's only one of possible applications that can be built on Ribbit + BT platform. Last year when BT acquired Ribbit, they explained this deal with the desire to create Google Voice (GrandCentral) alternative. But now BT is going to rethink its whole voice business with the help of this US startup. Because now in the age of internet communications telecoms can't survive just selling  call minutes. Skype and other VoIP providers push the call price down and it becomes harder and harder to earn on this.

So what can the telecoms offer instead? Their networks and platforms for developers, that will create voice applications integrated with web-services. So BT has the global network. And Ribbit has the platform, that allows to integrate voice services to SaaS and web applications. They have already created such voice add-ons for Salesforce, Oracle and even Google Wave. And third party developers (like SlideRocket) have already created hundreds of Ribbit implementations for their SaaS apps.

The main BT/Ribbit competitors on this new Voice-for-Web market are Jajah (powered by Deutsche Telekom) and Adobe (with its Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service). There are also some smaller startups like TringMe and Twilio. Probably, soon Skype and Google also will enter this market.

See also: Top 10 VoIP services