Archive for the ‘Telephony’ Category

Ribbit’s Converged Communications Desktop for Windows 7 Helps Transform Provider Revenue Model

Thursday, February 11th, 2010 | located in Partners, Platform, Telephony | 1 Comment »

Ribbit for Windows 7 (code name: Meridia), will help carriers leverage their existing customer base and network assets to boost revenues and add more value to their subscribers. Co-developed with Microsoft, Magpie and Amadeus - this customizable desktop interface consolidates communications in a single place.

Built as a proof-of-concept, Ribbit for Windows 7 demonstrates how carriers can apply trends impacting the telecommunications industry to increase average revenue per user (ARPU). As a branded desktop application, Ribbit for Windows 7 brings the carrier brand to the forefront of the customer experience, and provides a revenue-generating vehicle through local advertising and international call termination. Using an opt-in model, the companies who own this data can market and advertise based on their understanding of their subscribers tastes, geographic location and social graph.

Ribbit for Windows 7 is compatible with Windows Live Contacts, and provides new ways to stay connected in a rich mobile desktop experience. It offers click-to-call/click-to-conference functionality, visual voicemail, SMS and instant messaging (IM) via an intuitive, customizable, drag and drop user interface using touch-screen features from Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Carriers and service providers are struggling to maintain growth and relevancy in an increasingly mobile-dominated world. In fact, according to a March 2009 IBM Global CEO Survey, more than half of the telecom executives surveyed plan to open their networks to external application providers, and a third of them are considering ways to capitalize on existing customer relationships and mobile networks to help boost ARPU.

Voice as an Application Drives Increased Revenue and Decreases Subscriber Churn
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT, Ribbit understands how to help carriers improve subscriber productivity, sustain high value margins and reduce subscriber churn through bundled services. Ribbit’s open, cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model allows telecom companies to eliminate the tremendous cost associated with building out a network that would otherwise require 24 – 36 months to build, deploy and market.

Quotes:

• Joe Black, Ribbit VP of Strategy and Business Development: “This emerging monetization model will enable providers to deliver bundled applications and services that will yield a higher margin and reduce subscriber churn. By leveraging Ribbit’s powerful platform based APIs, providers can enter markets they were once unable to reach due to regulation of the telecom industry and the cost-prohibitive nature of building out networks.”
• Joseph Hofstader, Telecommunications Industry Architect and Evangelist, Microsoft Communications Sector: “Over the last couple of years, we’ve watched a number of trends create an environment that is now revolutionizing the communications industry – among those is voice as an application and communications networks as programming platforms. Today, network carriers have an opportunity to increase their revenues by applying the economic model of the Web to the telecommunications industry. By offering value-added communications services, they can capitalize on technological advancements. The application of the still-evolving Internet business model to a century old industry may seem contradictory to many passive observers but a closer look reveals that the main revenue drivers in both industries are remarkably similar: subscriptions, transactions and advertising—and that is where the opportunity lies.”

Ribbit for Windows 7, will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (taking place February 15-18, 2010) in the Microsoft booth #1D19. Ribbit is focused on helping carriers integrate rich communications into existing networks, build revenues and attract and retain customers and we feel Meridia is exactly the solution the telco industry has been looking for.

Tags: Ribbit, ribbit converged communications desktop, ribbit for windows 7, ribbit meridia, unified communications

Vegas. Baby.

Monday, March 30th, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Telephony | No Comments »

Ribbit’s Brian Coulter, Alain Mowad and David Markowitz are packing their bags full of water bottles (very important to stay hydrated) and heading Vegas for a couple of days (April 1-3, 2009) as CTIA and other wireless loving folks roll into that overly lit town.

They will all be roaming the CTIA hallways in between meetings, and if you really want to make sure you see Brian while there, your chances will be greatly improved if you head on over to the DIDX Dinner Party at Gordon Biersch on Wednesday night (just make sure you RSVP to save yourself a seat!).

And rumor has it all three will be at the Wipjam event on Thursday, April 2nd so pop over to that give them all a squeeze.

Remember fellas…water is your friend. Don’t forget to drink some while you are there.

Tags: ctia, ctia2009, las vegas, Ribbit, telco, wireless

Voice Peering and the Telephony (R)Evolution

Friday, June 27th, 2008 | located in Platform, Telephony | 2 Comments »

I enjoyed being part of Tuesday’s Voice Peering Forum and joining a panel exploring Service Delivery Platforms and the intersection of Web 2.0 and telecom with an outstanding lineup of telephony innovators:

Thomas Howe (moderator), CEO of The Thomas Howe Company
Garry Galinsky, Director, Product Innovation for Call Genie
Shai Berger, CEO & Co-Founder, Fonolo
Pankaj Shroff, Chief Applications Architect, Sonus Network

Ribbit’s content on this panel garnered some great attention, including a post positioning Ribbit as “the phone company of the future” by voice peering expert Rich Tehrani. We also like moderator Thomas Howe’s comments on this video interview fresh from the Voice Peering show.

The audience at Voice Peering was as interesting as the presenters tuned in professionals representing carriers, Homeland Security, Web properties, new-age Voice 2.0 companies and more and everyone came to exchange thoughts on the whole new dynamic of interconnected voice services using this emerging peering fabric.

An “aha moment” came as I considered the visionary work that voice peering is generating, and the impact of this work on the established telephony landscape.

I associate this with natural selection. What’s happening now resembles what we see when a new species entering an ecosystem with certain inherent evolutionary advantages over the incumbent species. The species will co-exist for a while, but after a time the more efficient species, with advantages that better suit it to the environment, will become dominant.

We all felt the rumblings of this coming change on Tuesday’s panel. The technologies being deployed and relationships being formed right now will create global connectivity that transcends the legacy economic and infrastructure barriers that are a by-product of the last 60 years of telecomm history.

The way it was done is not the way it will be. It’s exciting to be part of the change and perhaps, to reference Rich Tehrani, to be a pivotal part of the phone experience of the future.

-Crick

Tags: call genie, Platform, sonus networks, Telephony, thomas howe, voice 2.0, voice peering, web 2.0

Big Thoughts on “Big Things Next”

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 | located in Telephony | No Comments »

As all in the Ribbit community work hard, join forces and drive forward to build “the phone company of the future,” it’s so refreshing to hear a voice other than the ones around us describe the vision of what’s possible in new telephony. Read what telco thought leader (and fellow eComm speaker) Martin Geddes recently wrote in his outstanding blog, Telepocalypse.net:

“Integration of Web and Telco is probably the Next Big Thing. The phone experience (address book, call logs, presence, voicemail, etc.) comes with you into the web sites you visit, and vice versa. Why can’t someone leave me a ‘Skype’ voicemail, but I collect it on my T-Mobile handset’s voicemail system? Bags of cash in getting this to work together…”

It’s worth reading this whole post, and clicking through on the “2-sided markets” link if you like what Martin says. We do…he expresses some high points in the evolving Ribbit story. Want more? Martin’s eComm keynote shares a clear vision for what’s coming in communications. Enjoy.

Thanks to Lee Dryburgh for sharing this post with us.

Tags: Ribbit, Telephony, telephony 2.0