• Read Write Web, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12 PM

British Telecom has purchased the Web telephony platform Ribbit for $105 million. According to Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick, this one is a great fit, because Ribbit can bring click-to-call functionality to any Web application. Significantly, Kirkpatrick says that Ribbit could help move the stuttering telecom giant forward.

Ribbit is essentially a platform that lets developers add click-to-call functionality to Web applications. The key is its well-built developer platform. "Even with giant research and development budgets, established companies are increasingly hard pressed to compete with the innovation brought to market by a whole world of developers once those developers are handed Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)," says Kirkpatrick, adding that "someone had to buy Ribbit and it's a sign of the ineptitude of U.S. telecom companies that none of them did."

As Michael Boustridge, president, BT Americas said in the press release about the deal: "The Ribbit platform makes it simpler, cheaper and faster to build communications functionality into applications, enabling developers to introduce new revenue-generating voice services in hours, rather than weeks. By combining the Ribbit platform with BT's existing web services, we have the potential to deliver some of the world's finest applications for communications innovation benefiting consumers and businesses alike."

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