BT acquires Ribbit for $105 million

U.K. telco BT said it has acquired Web voice platform company Ribbit, one of several companies that had emerged in recent years to allow  developers to create new VoIP-enabled Web applications. The U.S. company often was mentioned in the same breath as GrandCentral, the voice applications company acquired by Google.

Voice applications have been incorporated in an increasing number of different online and unified communications approaches, to varying degrees of success. Depending on who is offering these applications, they can present a competitive threat to telcos that are seeing landlines continue to drop off from one quarter to the next. That makes BT's move interesting, aggressive and risky, but BT has made a point of pushing itself and its network toward a new Web-influenced services model. The company has been trying to encourage service mash-ups over its network, and while this effort is still in its infancy, the Ribbit deal shows how committed BT is to such strategies.

For more:
- read this story [1] at The Washington Post

Related articles:
Ribbit had called itself "Silicon Valley's first telephone company." Ribbit report [2]
Telco APIs have been getting more webby. Telco report [3]