Web 2.0 challenges for Ribbit
Ribbit is an excellent example of what kind of challenges a telecom outfit can face in the Web 2.0 world. First, Ribbit is an innovator of kinds - it is perhaps the only flash/flex based phone I have seen which claims to provide connectivity to the PSTN. I don't fully understand what architecture they currently utilize, but its quite possible that they connect RTMP protocol to their traditional network on the proprietary softswitch they have on the backend.
There are several game changing plays still left when it comes to VoIP and flash, so lets summarize those before we come back to ribbit. Real time streaming using Flash today requires the Flash MX media server in the network and currently my assumption is that it doesn't support SIP (though Adobe has included support for Speex - an open source free codec in the latest version 10 of Flash). When Flash does support SIP, a lot of new players doing VoIP and Flash integration will jump in. Flash is a proprietary technology and there are a lot of open source versions of software which attempt to reverse engineer Flash (yes, this is completely legal it seems). Red5 is the most prominent of all which intends to act as a substitute for MX server. GNU flash is a client side substitute for Flash runtime.
I also didn't fully understand Ribbit's business model when I was on their site, but that is perhaps due to the fact that they are very different from a traditional telecom company from this perspective. A traditional telecom company sells minutes when connecting to PSTN or monthly charges for telephone numbers you can buy. Ribbit's model is a little different here and they seem to be mostly trying to sell their VoIP and web capabilities to other companies with web based products which will benefit with Voice features. Salesforce.COM is one integration they have done. One suggestion from me would be the more traditional customer support market where companies would benefit with Voice support to improve post sales communications with customers. On the consumer side, Ribbit's model is not clear and I am quite surprised they don't have the valley approved "Ad Model" worked out yet for that ;)
There are several game changing plays still left when it comes to VoIP and flash, so lets summarize those before we come back to ribbit. Real time streaming using Flash today requires the Flash MX media server in the network and currently my assumption is that it doesn't support SIP (though Adobe has included support for Speex - an open source free codec in the latest version 10 of Flash). When Flash does support SIP, a lot of new players doing VoIP and Flash integration will jump in. Flash is a proprietary technology and there are a lot of open source versions of software which attempt to reverse engineer Flash (yes, this is completely legal it seems). Red5 is the most prominent of all which intends to act as a substitute for MX server. GNU flash is a client side substitute for Flash runtime.
I also didn't fully understand Ribbit's business model when I was on their site, but that is perhaps due to the fact that they are very different from a traditional telecom company from this perspective. A traditional telecom company sells minutes when connecting to PSTN or monthly charges for telephone numbers you can buy. Ribbit's model is a little different here and they seem to be mostly trying to sell their VoIP and web capabilities to other companies with web based products which will benefit with Voice features. Salesforce.COM is one integration they have done. One suggestion from me would be the more traditional customer support market where companies would benefit with Voice support to improve post sales communications with customers. On the consumer side, Ribbit's model is not clear and I am quite surprised they don't have the valley approved "Ad Model" worked out yet for that ;)
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