VentureBeat

Ribbit, the web phone company recently acquired by BT for $105 million, has opened its developer platform to the general public. Although the Mountain View, Calif. company makes useful applications like the recently-updated Ribbit for Salesforce, the most exciting part of its technology is the platform, which promises to allow anyone to add phone capabilities to their web applications.

The platform has been in beta testing for the last few months, and there are already more than 7,500 members signed up in Ribbit’s developer community. Until now, if anyone wanted to voice-enable their applications with Ribbit, they needed the company’s approval, which meant that there was a waiting list. With today’s announcement, Executive Vice President Crick Waters says Ribbit is now closer to Google Maps, which allows anyone who wants to use its application programming interfaces (APIs) to add mapping to their web apps.

Ribbit also plans to boost those developers numbers, and to encourage cool uses of its APIs, by offering a $100,000 prize for the “killer app” built with its platform.

Broadly speaking, there seem to be four markets that can make good use of the Ribbit platform, Waters says: business productivity, media/marketing such as design agencies, social communications such as SayHear.org and a new category that Ribbit is announcing today, carriers who use Ribbit’s “bring your own network” model. That last part is a direct outgrowth of the BT acquisition. Ribbit normally provides the network infrastructure, but in BT’s case that wasn’t necessary — the British telecommunications giant wanted to offer Ribbit features across its own network. It looks like BT isn’t being too protective about this, since Ribbit now offers that ability to other telecom networks who, like BT, want to add Ribbit to their offerings.

Although Ribbit dubs itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” others offer similar web phone platforms — Ribbit executives named Ifbyphone and Jaduka, and we should also add IntelePeer, which is used to add voice capabilities to big-name sites and services like WebEx and Facebook. But the competition subscribes to a more closed, professional model, compared to the Ribbit platforms new openness (which I described above).

BT, the dominant British telecommunications company, has acquired Ribbit, a company that has styled itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” for $105 million.

VentureBeat first heard news of the deal in July and reported it. At the time, the company’s spokesman Don Thorson adamantly denied that any deal had happened, but it was clear something was up. Today, the company confirmed the amount of the deal.

This is an impressive performance for Ribbit, which first launched in January. In a day when there are hundreds of VoIP companies struggling to be heard above the noise, Ribbit came along and showed how success is still possible — if you’ve got deep technology, and put together a sharp team.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Ribbit’s software lets you make a phone call from a web page, or direct your own phone calls to a web page. It includes ways for you to do things like transcribe these calls into text, that you can then search. More importantly, however, the company launched in December a platform for developers who want to build Ribbit’s features into any other application — including a way to sale the phone applications to large companies.

Notably, Ribbit built voice services for online business software company Salesforce, which includes the first service that combines mobile voice automation and so-called software-as-a-service. Ribbit released a consumer-facing product called Amphibian.

We should note the seven month launch-to-sale was deceptively simple. The company was actually built upon years of prior work of its founders, Ted Griggs and Crick Waters. At an earlier venture, Griggs (pictured left) had built a “soft switch” for the phone service that underpinned Ribbit. They brought in AT&T and Sprint executives, and then married that experience with the Web 2.0 magic from engineers they lured from Yahoo and EBay.

The company had raised only $13 million over the past two years. It included $10 million in a second round of capital led by Allegis Capital, with KPG Ventures participating, and before that, $3 million in first round funding from Alsop Louie Partners. It’s a nice win for Alsop Louie, a relatively new fund, which was earliest into the deal, and therefore earned the highest multiple.

Ribbit will continue to be operated independently, but will be a fully owned subsidiary of BT. The move continues an effort by BT to move into other sectors, i.e,, to make money from other services than from pure phone calls.

Thorson said he was forced to deny the initial rumors becuase a deal hadn’t been completed, and because the London stock exchange takes a dim view of deals that are leaked before they’re finalized.

Update: Anthony Ha here. I just got off the phone with Griggs and JP Rangaswami, BT’s managing director of service design. Both of them emphasized that Ribbit fits into BT’s larger goal to transform itself into a next-generation telecommunications company — as Matt notes above, BT wants to move beyond just providing the “pipes” for phone calls, and enabling voice features in any software application is an important component of that. As Rangaswami put it, this “raises the ante in the overall communications platform race.”

For Ribbit, on the other hand, Griggs says BT offers  a “firehose” of opportunities, starting with BT’s 21CN network.

When the possibility of an acquisition came up, Griggs says Ribbit was already looking for a global partner and considering a third round of venture funding. The companies’ similar visions, plus the fact that BT wanted Ribbit to stay autonomous, sweetened the deal.

Updated with a response from the company.

Ribbit, a company that has styled itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” has been purchased by BT, the dominant British telecommunications company, we’re hearing.

[Update: A company spokesperson has gotten back to us denying that there's been an acquisition. However, the company wouldn't comment on whether or not acquisition talks were taking place. There are a few possibilities here. One is that it my source (and I) are completely wrong and that there's nothing happening. Another possibility is that the deal hasn't officially closed but is near closing, with some formalities still to be taken care of. Yet another possibility is that Ribbit is not just looking at an acquisition from BT, but is talking to other potential acquirers; or maybe the company has turned down an offer (or two) and is looking to stay independent. We're digging for more. Let us know if you know anything to add. My source provided me with enough off-the-record details that I think an acquisition is at least in the picture, which is why I decided to publish in the first place.]

[Update Two: If you chose the second possibility from my previous update, then it appears you're correct. Techcrunch is reporting that Ribbit has been bought by BT for $55 million.]

Mountain View, Calif.-based Ribbit’s software lets you make a phone call from a web page, or direct your own phone calls to a web page. It includes ways for you to do things like transcribe these calls into text, that you can then search. The company launched in December, with a platform for developers who are looking to build phone-based web-connected applications for large companies.

Most notably, Ribbit has built voice services for online business software company Salesforce, which includes the first service that combines mobile voice automation and so-called software-as-a-service.

Ribbit also released a consumer-facing product called Amphibian last month.

Meanwhile, a number of other Silicon Valley companies are also working on variations of the concept of connecting calling services and web pages.

Ribbit recently raised $10 million in a second round led by Allegis Capital, and joined by KPG Ventures, which follows on a $3 million round raised from Alsop Louie Ventures more than a year ago.

Here’s a video about the Ribbit-Salesforce integration:

UK’s phone giant BT has invested in the WiFi router start-up FON, in an effort to cover the UK with what they proclaim will be the “world’s largest WiFi community.”

BT has more than 3 million broadband customers. Under the deal, BT will “invite” customers to join FON’s service, but its it not clear why they’d have the incentive to do so. WiFi ventures recently have proven disappointing. There’s lots of competition from 3D broadband providers for mobile users, and other technologies like WiMax are on their way.

It’s also not clear why the deal took so long to get underway. We reported this was going to happen back in February.

Under FON’s standard model, if customers buy a €34.44 ($48.70) FON WiFi router, and share their WiFi connection with others, they in turn get access to other members’ WiFi network anywhere in the world for free. The BT announcement is being covered widely, but surprisingly the coverage hasn’t asked the big question: Is BT giving away the routers to its customers, or it is it making them pay? We’ve got a query out to the company and will update when we hear. The announcement said the two companies are sharing revenue from the deal, so presumably customers will be forced to pay. [Update: The company says the routers will be given to BT customers for free.  Now the question becomes where is there revenue being made, and how will FON benefit from this? We're asking...stay tuned]

Fon now claims 500,000 members, however its uncertain how many of those are paying, and how many of them have their own routers as part of the network. FON says it only has 190,000 hotspots, suggesting that not each member has their own hotspot.

BT joins other investors, including Google and Internet phone company Skype, on the board of FON. The terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. Other investors in FON are Index and Sequoia Capital.

BT competes against companies like Vodafone and T-Mobile, which offer mobile broadband coverage. BT has partnered with chains like McDonald’s and airport company BAA to offer wireless access. It has also experimented with muni WiFi in 12 cities, but like elsewhere, including in the U.S., the muni efforts haven’t done that well. Customers are never certain when and where WiFi works because coverage is spotty.

FON has signed similar deals France’s Neuf Cegetel and the U.S.’ Time Warner.

BT, the giant UK carrier, is on the verge of wrapping up a deal with the Spanish start-up FON, which will let BT customers make cheap calls on FON WiFi hotspots.

Reports about the talks surfaced here (and this story has good details), and a source close to FON tells VentureBeat the deal is near complete.

It is significant, because FON’s routers will give BT Fusion mobile customers a way to share access to their home WiFi networks. Then, in multiple areas of the UK, these customers can make near-free Internet calls, by using those networks. This may mean less revenue as calls leave BT’s network. But perhaps BT feels it doesn’t have any choice, as it continues to get undercut by cheaper competitors.

Under the deal, all new ADSL accounts will be FON access points, we’re told.

FON is backed by Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.