Ribbit offers an open alternative to Skype

The rate of evolution in the VoIP market would surely make Darwin’s head spin and the latest entry into this market would probably blow his mind. The recently-launched Ribbit company bills itself as “Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company.” Like Skype, Ribbit’s system supports softphones, but unlike Skype Ribbit isn’t a closed system. An interesting issue is that being based on Flash/Flex technology no installation is required as it is completely Web-based - an interesting and potentially powerful advantage over Skype.

The company’s architectural platform diagram shows support for interoperation with the public switched telephone network, SIP and - this is the biggie - with Skype.

As if all that wasn’t enough the company also plans to support Voice over instant messaging services (VoIM) including those provided by MSN, Yahoo, and XMPP-based systems which includes Google Talk and Jabber.

By: Mark Gibbs
Source: networkworld.com