Archive for the ‘Telephony’ Category

BT brings Ribbit voice innovation to corporate phones, desktops and softphones

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 | located in BT, Telephony | 1 Comment »

BT today announced that its corporate voice-communication solution, BT Onevoice, will integrate advanced voice services from BT’s open innovation platform Ribbit, bringing feature-rich voice applications to the desktop. Onevoice Ribbit v1.0 connects the worlds of the web and traditional corporate voice networks by embedding Ribbit’s innovative voice features into any existing corporate telephony environments.

• Service is aimed at multinational customers looking to realise the benefits converged communications deliver.
• Will significantly lower operational, network and administration costs by keeping voice calls on-net, minimising expensive international calls.
• Onevoice Ribbit v1.0 will provide users with a single direct dial phone number for all incoming and outgoing calls making it easier for customers, suppliers and partners to contact them first time.
• Users will be able to define how calls are routed through the Onevoice VPN to reach them if they are away from their office.
• Calls will be delivered on-net to other sites directly to the Ribbit softphone or via the nearest PSTN breakout point to any number globally, minimising international call costs.
• Users can choose to have multiple device options for making and receiving calls through the Onevoice network offering significant call savings on mobile bills.

The cloud-based service includes a softphone which gives users easy access to a range of advanced call features for calling any BT Onevoice on-net number, according to their corporate dial-plan, in addition to off-net public numbers. Enterprise calls can be originated from a softphone, and all on net numbers and services such as BT Conferencing audio bridges can be accessed at a fraction of the cost of a mobile or hotel phone call.

The user’s ‘One Number’ can also be directed to multiple end points or devices which can easily be moved or changed, so that multiple end points or devices can be reached and even ring simultaneously. Onevoice Ribbit v1.0 offers a portal for users to set up and administer the service for themselves, including the configuration of end-user devices, call forwarding rules, conference speed dials and speed-dial favourites. Users will also be able to view call logs, manage passwords and voicemail including speech-to-text transcriptions. The transcription is sent as text to email or SMS, and the recording is attached to emails so users can listen to the voice mail.

The service will be released to selected customers in beta this summer, with full release expected by the end of this year.

Quote(s):

• Neil Sutton, Vice President, Global Portfolio, BT Global Services, said: “Delivering Ribbit to Onevoice customers enables them to start the journey to unified communications and accelerate the adoption of communications applications to the desktop. Its innovative features also make users lives significantly simpler while enabling the organization to spend less. This announcement shows our commitment to help customers transform their business, drive down costs and help them increase productivity.”
• Erin Smith, managing director, BT Innovate & Design: “Delivering Ribbit to Onevoice customers not only provides connectivity to BT’s global network, it enables them to start the journey to unified communications and accelerate the adoption of communications applications to the desktop. Voice truly becomes just another application, but the innovative features also make users lives significantly simpler while helping the organisation to spend less.”

Media:

• BT Onevoice Ribbit is a powerful unified communications solution for the enterprise
• BT Onevoice Ribbit 1.0 Features List
• How Ribbit Works
• What is Ribbit (video)

More about BT Onevoice:

• BT Onevoice allows customers for the first time to buy a fully converged, of-the-shelf, integrated voice and data service under a single bill, contract and SLA. BT Onevoice Mobile Access is an easy method to reduce international mobile spend.
• BT’s Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solutions include a combination of traditional voice services, next generation voice services including VoIP and IPT, BT professional services and support of key vendor platforms such as Cisco, Nortel and Microsoft managed services. BT also offers full integration of Cisco UCC with key software platforms such as MS and IBM applications to offer a comprehensive UCC portfolio.
• BT Global Services solutions directly address the needs of Global Enterprise customers in both local site based deployments of customer premise equipment, and also to reflect the growing demand in “cloud” based hosted solutions. Both premises equipment-based and hosted solutions are supporting leading vendors in UCC and are both underpinned by BT’s voice solutions, integration skills and global networking capabilities.

Tags: BT, onevoice, Ribbit, unified communications

Taking wholesale voice services to the next level

Sunday, April 4th, 2010 | located in Articles and Media Mentions, Platform, Telephony | No Comments »

Nice article from Global Telecoms Business (sponsored by BT) discussing what carriers must do to differentiate themselves and remain relevant.

If carriers are going to drive usage and return on their network investments, they must provide compelling services and applications that offer customer choice and do more than invest in networks.

Tags: paas, Ribbit, telco 2.0

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