Twilio is in Japan

Twilio is entering the Japan market, with KDDI partnership!

The TechCrunch article rightfully pointed out why this is a huge win for Twilio.

Quoting how other carriers embarking on API failed:

WAC — a “unified open platform” that was being built as a joint effort between AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile, Sprint, and others — imploded before it even left the gate. Orange quietly killed off all of their API efforts last month, and mentions of things like Telefonica’s BlueVia seem to come up once every never. 

Developers, it would seem, just don’t care to work with carriers when they can avoid it.

SwitchCoder - Telephony Platform without API

SwitchCoder is kind of like Twilio, but without the RESTful APIs.

Instead, they provide a javascript engine for you to write your code.

This javascript way of using telephony service is not new. Tropo has implemented that for a long time.

Their pricing is fairly similar to Twilio, Tropo, Plivio (and a dozen):

• 1 cent per minute
• 1 cent per SMS
• $0.50 per phone number

TelAPI - Another telephony API like Twilio

TelAPI is out of beta today.

TelAPI is like Twilio, a product for developers to easily create voice/sms apps. The features they offer is largely similar. Pricing also the same.

There is only one unique feature I see:

• Voice and audio effects

They support TwiML (Twilio proprietary XML syntax to instruct the call flow) AND also Restful web API. Cool if you don't have to know the TwiML.

Did Twilio Pricing Became Worse?

I remembered Twilio pricing used to be very simple. Only a couple of components (Number, Voice minutes, SMS) all fitted in 1 page.

Now, it seems to be in 3 different pages!

http://www.twilio.com/voice/pricing

http://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing

http://www.twilio.com/client/pricing

And not to mention that the same number you subscribed could be used across Voice and SMS.

Phono SDK Makes Call From Your Web Browser

Phono provides an SDK to make calls from your web browser. To be more specific, they provide a javascript library that is easy to integrate into a web development.

It is now using flash technology (for mic), but WebRTC is coming soon (as they claimed).

Phono is not the only library that does voice call from a web browser. Twilio Client is another one.

Twilio Connect, is similar to Facebook Connect

Twilio has been leading the communication space. Their value proposition has always been making it dead easy for developers to build Voice & SMS apps.

Today, they are making it even easier by introducing Twilio Connect. Just like Facebook Connect (also an OAuth login), you can use Twilio Connect to log in a Twilio account, and make phone calls and send SMS via that account. Of course, you charge to that account.

Developers can now build their apps, and let users pay via their own Twilio account. This solve a billing problem to developers.

This sounds like a great feature. However, this also means developers would not be able to markup for the voice minutes and SMS sent from the app. Moreover, Twilio is not doing any revenue share with developers using Twilio Connect.

This is unlike BlueVia Connect, which does revenue sharing.

Find out more about Twilio Connect here: http://www.twilio.com/api/connect