During AT&T’s Developer Summit, the provider announced its intention to become to first US carrier to launch support for the WebRTC standard. The real-time communications standard has gained significant interest over the past year, and is set to be disruptive due to its wide-support across over a billion different browsers.
WebRTC has been touted by analysts as one of the most disruptive
WebRTC enables voice and video calling between browsers without the need to install any software or plugins whatsoever. AT&T is releasing an “Enhanced WebRTC API” which takes the basic standard and adds several enhancements to how communications are handled using it.
One of the enhancements, for example, allows calls to extend to landlines and mobile numbers. A second piece of functionality from the API enables a programmable “Caller ID” to show up on a call received to an AT&T mobile or landline number from a WebRTC browser session. A final feature allows developers to transfer a placed communication between a PC, Mac, or Tablet, to a smartphone in a similar vein to how Apple handles calls and messages between Mac computers and iOS8 devices.
“AT&T’s powerful new Enhanced WebRTC API will allow developers to re-imagine phone and video calling experiences for our connected, IP–centric world,” said AT&T Mobility Chief Marketing Officer David Christopher during the Developer Summit. “WebRTC has been touted by analysts as one of the most disruptive communication technologies in years, and we think there will be rapid rise in the adoption of the standard and innovative development in what value it can create for businesses and consumers.”
The quality of communications using WebRTC has the potential to be higher than the likes of Skype and Google Hangouts due to its peer-to-peer nature which avoids routing through a third-party server. Microsoft has announced that it has contributed to development of the standard, and will be using WebRTC for the web-based version of Skype.
In a blog post, the company wrote: “We’ve been actively collaborating with the W3C and IETF to contribute and improve standards like the ORTC API for WebRTC to enable a wide range of features from simple conversations to scalable multiparty video conferences.”
Support for WebRTC is available in most modern browsers except Apple’s Safari (as of writing.) To get started with developing apps using AT&T’s enhanced WebRTC API, you can sign-up to participate in the public beta program at: http://developer.att.com/webrtc
Do you think WebRTC will change real-time communications? Let us know in the comments.
