BT shutters Web21C dev platform in favor of Ribbit

The Web21C SDK team responded on the same boards explaining the decision: “We acknowledge and applaud the innovative companies that jumped ahead of the market to adopt leading-edge programmable communication technology and who created commercial operations using the W21C platform, and we are truly disappointed that we cannot sustain operations. We are simply unable to sustain the platform in its current form.”

The SDK team said developers had two options going forward, one, using similar telecom APIs from competitors such as IfByPhone or Jaduka, or two, “suspend your own operations in anticipation of the fully developed Ribbit platform,” the SDK team wrote. “Naturally we’d like you to migrate to Ribbit when its ready; however, we fully understand that you have businesses to run and may choose to move to, and stay with, another service provider.”

At least one analyst said it was important to look at the big picture when it came to BT changing horses in the development arena.

It’s pretty clear that BT felt it could accomplish its goals of opening up its network more efficiently by changing vehicles,” said Joe McGarvey, analyst with Current Analysis. “In the end, though, I would interpret the move as BT further endorsing a open network strategy, which is general I think is a good thing. I really think we’re into the early days of this sort of thing and BT, as being one of the more aggressive carriers in recognizing that a fundamental service delivery change will be necessary to be competitive, has some wriggle room to get things right.”