Web telephony platform arena gaining momentum

Looks like web telephony platform startups are doing great in these troubled times. Earlier BT acquired ribbit , the – “Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company” startup. Last week another platform player intelepeer raised $18 million dollars to expand their business across different regions. This week, ifbyphone announced series B funding of $4.6 million. Existing investors Origin Ventures and Apex Ventures led this round as well. These platforms expose API’s using which developers can build web apps enabled with voice/sms/messaging. The good thing about these API’s are, they enable developing complex apps very quickly without the need to understand the core telecom technology. This, by itself, is a big game changer. Another web telephony platform startup jajah has been quite for sometime now. Either jajah is up to something big or they are lost in the economy turmoil.

This week Ribbit launched their web phone platform . The platform was in beta for over a year now. The company claims to have more than 7,500 developers signed up for their service. They will be presenting the platform at Adobe MAX. In addition, they announced a killer app challenge with prize money of $100, 00. This should definitely boost their developer numbers. I like what they call “Bring Your Own Network”. What this means is- The Ribbit platform can connect to the network in two ways: via MPLS links or a SIP interconnection. So even operators can partner with ribbit and offer platform-development-as-a-service to their customers over their networks.

Intelepeer AppworX open communication platform and voice peering grid network gives application developers the ability to create high-quality interactive voice, video, SMS, data and other rich media services that boost productivity while reducing telecommunications and operational expenses through the hosted business model. A communications-as-a-service (CaaS) offering, IntelePeer AppworX is ideal for increasing collaboration among business application users, fostering closer connections with customers and introducing communications-enabled business processes that drive efficiency and deliver cost savings.

Compared to ribbit, Intelepeer claims to have partnership with more than 50 customers leading global carriers and service providers – letting those carriers complete calls more cheaply internationally. Also, software companies (MS, WebEx), carriers (BT, AT&T, Verizon) and online businesses (Facebook, TMCnet) are already using its service to integrate phone services within their applications. WebEx uses their platform to assist in an emergency response system.

Another hosted web telephony platform company to mention is IfByPhone. Ifbyphone also provides hosted platform to build telephony applications. They support bunch of features like Call Routing, Smart Conference call, Smart Click-to-Call, Phone-Me-now etc. Worthy of note is that Fierce Voip voted them as Fierce 15 VoIP companies . Check out their developer site for more information

For more Telco 2.0 platform companies, read my earlier article