Impressions of BT’s 21CN API

August 3rd, 2008

BT is building a rather well known network to replace it’s existing one – it’s all bundled under the name 21CN (for 21st Century Network).
One of the lesser known aspects of this is the API into the network functions. I started playing with this on Saturday and was surprised by a number of things:
1) It’s really easy to get started and use
2) It seems to do a lot less than I might have expected
3) What it does do is really quite useful

It took about 2 hours from first registering to getting my first little mini application interfacing with the system – pretty neat and you can test some sensible stuff for free – sending SMSs and making calls though there are some pretty obvious restrictions (you can’t call premium rate numbers for example).

That said, there’s only about 6 things you can do with the much vaunted plaform:

• Send SMS messages
• Receive SMS messages and react in some way
• Set up a call between 2 3rd parties
• Set up an manage a conference call
• Set up a IVR call flow application
• Set up a database of users with attributes

That’s it – however in all that there’s enough to do all the basics of a adding telephony integration to your business. I’m sure there are cheaper ways to do any one of these, but it’s certainly a nice integrated service.

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