

 AT&T Announces New Call Management API and Alpha API Program  - sciurus
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=23651&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=35916

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sciurus
Brian from Voxeo Labs here: I'm really excited that this has publicly
launched. I worked on the call management api from the operations side of
things, and I'll be happy to answer any questions I can.

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knodi
Can you give a brief overview of how the API works. I can't really understand
the press release on what solution does the API provide.

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pfisch
I agree. They start out by talking about video and phone integration in apps.
But then they are like, you have 1 million api calls, and it will translate
text for you. Please pay us money for our babel fish. Also we will populate
forms for you sometimes.

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josh2600
So they're talking about all of the AT&T APIs with respect to the 1 Million
API calls which includes things like Watson translation and other such
niceties.

Does that help explain?

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bdcravens
Had to reread this a couple of times:

 _AT &T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and
affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc._

Gotta love corporate America.

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bgilroy26
I agree that the fancy legal/business structures are offputting.

On the other hand, AT&T is making a strong endorsement of the product by
offering it under their name. Since the customer trusts AT&T when it comes to
telephony technology, this saves a lot of money for the 'subsidiaries and
affiliates' on marketing etc. AT&T saves money by not having to develop their
own in-house product.

Who doesn't win here?

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akalsey
Company the size of AT&T working in highly regulated areas, everything's a
subsidiary for various accounting and legal reasons.

AT&T Mobile and AT&T UVerse are two different companies. They probably have
different operating entities for different states, even. But they roll
everything up into a single brand for ease of sales and marketing.

~~~
bdcravens
True, though it's interesting that you can purchase UVerse at an AT&T Mobility
store. (I have a friend who's an AT&T store manager) While it has the
appearance of being one company, I guess it's the rough equivalent of an
"affiliate" sale.

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jeffclark
Man.

I immediately dropped what I was doing to see if I could send or receive an
MMS from my laptop. The documentation and sample apps do not make it easy for
someone to figure out how to actually do that.

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johntdyer
Hey Jeff,

Did you check out the sample applications, they have a pretty well documented
example ( <https://gist.github.com/3125729> )

-John

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jeffclark
Thanks for the reply, John. I did check out the gists of the apps, so I guess
it's only fair to explain why I'm not a fan yet.

In the "download sample apps" gists, you don't actually include all the files:
where are the views? Where is the public directory? Clearly, someone could
create these themselves, but when I click a link to download the sample app, I
want to download the entire sample app and not just selected files. I don't
want to spend time debugging what's missing.

In the MMS sample app2, there are files for phone number lists and a "tokens"
file. But you'd have to go directly to the github repository to find out what
they're used for and how to use them. (I'm still not sure how/what "tokens"
does.)

I appreciate the amount of work it takes to release a public API (and one as
robust as this), but it's just kinda .... AT&T-y at this point.

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josh2600
Tremendously excited for the folks at Voxeo for this huge win.

In the past year they've inked with AT&T and T-Mobile.

My BIG question here is: Where does this leave Twilio? Did they not just ink a
deal with AT&T to provide apps for call control?

Reading between the lines: Twilio got locked out of AT&T because they don't do
IMS, whereas Voxeo does. Very interesting, very very interesting.

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macspoofing
Looks like AT&T screwed them (Twilio).

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josh2600
I agree: [http://thepbxblog.com/2013/01/07/att-and-apis-where-does-
twi...](http://thepbxblog.com/2013/01/07/att-and-apis-where-does-twilio-land/)

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geerlingguy
We've been using Tropo (by Voxeo) for phone and SMS integration for Flocknote
(www.flocknote.com) for almost two years, and I have to say they've done a
great job scaling up their services and support in that time. This new service
looks like a good step forward from AT&T!

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ltcoleman
My main question here would be could I use this API in an app that is
installed on phones on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.

I'm sure this is just my ignorance of understanding the press release.

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akalsey
Yes, Call Management is cross-carrier. Don't worry about not understanding the
press release. Those aren't ever written to be understood by humans.

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sachinag
So they're white labelling Tropo?

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akalsey
Not exactly. Instead of white labeling our APIs in our cloud, AT&T is running
their own APIs in their own network, just like our previous announcement with
Deutsche Telekom in Germany. We (Voxeo Labs) provided the technology to them,
and licensed the APIs.

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johntdyer
Woot, Way to go Tropo !

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tonywok
Great job guys! :)

