Ribbit, a web phone company that was acquired by BT in July 2008 and claimed to offer an open platform for telephony innovation, has quietly been ordered by its parent to shut their developer program and refocus efforts upon BT's own voice technology services.

Ribbit Developers were informed, via a newsletter, of the firm's new strategy earlier this week and told that the move would involve a discontinuation of both support and external access to their voice platform, SDKs and APIs.


BT is known to have integrated Ribbit's technology into its IP Exchange platform and the system also plays a big part in the operators corporate voice-communication solution (BT Onevoice). Ribbit is now recommending that users migrate to Twilio.com, which offers an allegedly programmable voice platform with "comparable features and pricing".