Posted 11/03/09 at 02:55:02 PM by Bart Salisbury

It didn’t take long for the other technological shoe to drop. Ribbit has hopped out a beta for Ribbit Mobile, a direct VoIP challenge to Google Voice. And one, by the looks of it, that just might fuel a VoIP arms race.

Ribbit Mobile is a cloud-based VoIP telephony service. Much the same as Google Voice, you get a phone number to which you can route your phones capable of conditional call-forwarding. Once there Ribbit Mobile can do everything Google Voice does with a call. But it doesn’t stop there. Ribbit Mobile also offers a nifty feature set not yet available in Google Voice. For example, Ribbit Mobile can route your call to any or all other phones you choose, or to Skype, MSN Messenger, or Google Talk. Ribbit Mobile can also alert you to missed calls via email, Skype, Google Talk, or SMS. And Ribbit Mobile has widgets which allow you to connect with iGoogle, Facebook, and MySpace. Best of all you can place calls directly from your browser.

Ribbit Mobile will be offered in two levels. One will be free, with services like voicemail transcription automated. The other, a professional level, will be fee-based, and will come with additional support. Currently, both levels are in beta. Sign-up for the beta is on-going.

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