Want to make a long distance call on the cheap? You’ve got plenty of options, including the likes of Google Voice, Skype, and numerous other VoIP providers. But things can get a little tricky if you don’t know someone’s phone number, or they don’t already have Skype installed. Today VoIP service provider Jajah, which was acquired by Telefónica in 2009, has a solution that will appeal to Facebook… → Read More
After selling his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million a year ago, co-founder Daniel Mattes has set his sights on the electronic payments market.
Mattes, who has apparently been baptized the “Bill Gates of the Alps”, has started a new company called Jumio. → Read More
Telefonica-owned O2 UK, the largest mobile operator in the country with over 20 million customers, is rolling out ‘International Favorites’, a new low cost international calling service with the aim to double its market share of overseas calls.
Unsurprisingly, it’s powered by Jajah, the VoIP company its parent Telefonica Europe purchased last December for 145 million Euros. A similar service was… → Read More
Less then seven months after it was acquired by Telefónica Europe (aka O2), for $207 million, VoIP service Jajah is launching its first integration with the large European carrier. O2 subscribers in Germany will now be able to designate up to five friends abroad as their Global Friends; Jajah will assign each of those friends local numbers, allowing you to call internationally from your mobile… → Read More
The reports from a few days ago that the Jajah deal with O2 closed at $200 million were correct. Telefónica Europe (aka O2) just announced that it bought Jajah for 145 million Euros ($207 million) in an all-cash deal.
Jajah, which provides Internet calling services and thus competes with Skype, was on the block since at least November (which TechCrunch was first to report on), following … → Read More
Last month, we wrote about the VoIP startup Jajah being the target of a bidding war. Today, it appears that war is over, with the winner being O2, and the price being $200 million, according to a report sent out by the financial website TheMarker, and being circulated by Reuters.
It was believed that Microsoft and Cisco were two other companies that were vying to get the company. Back in June… → Read More
There appears to be a good old bidding war going on for another VoIP startup, Jajah, following yesterday’s news about the acquisition of Gizmo5 by Google, a source in Silicon Valley with knowledge of the talks informs us.
Details are scarce at the moment, but Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Telefónica Europe (O2) are said to be looking to buy the venture capital-backed company for a price ranging… → Read More
Starting today, Jajah is rolling out a brand spankin’ new service – Jajah@call, a Twitter user-to-user phone call solution. That’s right, ladies and gents. Jajah, the self-proclaimed “world’s most innovative IP communications company,” is bringing this new feature to the wildly popular microblogging service. → Read More
VoIP startup Jajah has just scored major deals with eHarmony and Match.com, two of the web’s most popular dating sites, to provide online daters with semi-anonymous voice chat. The new features are part of Jajah’s ‘Platform for Dating’, which is also currently being tested on a number of other dating sites (though Jajah won’t name them, yet).
The new feature offers a good middle ground between… → Read More
VoIP service provider JAJAH just recently turned three years old and is today announcing a more important milestone: according to the heavily-funded startup, the one billionth call connection on the JAJAH platform was made some time ago. Unsurprisingly, that call was actually made using Yahoo’s Voice service, which is powered by JAJAH after both companies forged a major partnership for VoIP… → Read More
Jajah, a popular VoIP service provider, has released a new English/Chinese translation service called JAJAH.Babel just in time for the Olympic Games. The service, which was developed in conjunction with IBM, allows users to call a free number to get a near-instant translation of spoken sentences. The service isn’t meant for voice calls abroad – instead, it’s a handheld… → Read More
Just over a week ago the founders of and five engineers from VoIP services provider Jangl left for Jajah after the company failed to find a proper suitor. Following their departure, it was unclear what would happen to Jangl’s assets and remaining staff. Now we hear from multiple sources close to the deal that Live Universe has agreed to acquire both. This appears to conclude the Jangl saga… → Read More
VOIP provider JAJAH has just got a welcome boost via a deal with Yahoo that will see JAJAH power premium voice on Yahoo Messenger. Under the deal, JAJAH will provide its proprietary telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care to Yahoo Messenger users using the platform for receiving calls from the PSTN network, or for making calls to land lines and mobile phones. The… → Read More
Do you really want random people on the Web IMing you? Google thinks so. Yesterday, it added a chatback widget to Google Talk that lets you put a little badge on your Website or blog linked to your Google Talk account. When you are available, visitors to your site can start an instant message conversation with you. This is a similar idea to all the call-me buttons that have proliferated from… → Read More
When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget. In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites… → Read More
Social communications startup Jaxtr has been experiencing some pretty amazing growth. They’ve attracted over 5 million users in under 5 months (140 days). It’s a ten fold increase in users since they reported 500,000 users in July. Jaxtr attributes a lot of the growth to the utility of the product and virality of calling links placed in emails. In August, Jaxtr reported 1 million users… → Read More
VOIP provider Jajah and social VOIP startup Jangl are partnering up to create some new products out of a mutually recognized compatibility. The deal makes a lot of sense. Jajah is a high-profile VOIP startup making great strides in bringing VOIP to regular telephony (with over 2 million registered users), but their recently launched click-to-call widget hasn’t yet given them a large web… → Read More
Ad supported telephony has been a bit of a hot topic in telephony. Jingle Networks plans on ads supporting for Free 411. Virgin launched an ad supported phone service last year. Blyk and ThePudding are two new startups that recently launched their own phone-based ad solutions. Now VOIP provider Jajah is also offering the ad-option to earn free telephony. Eventually, they hope to bring the model to… → Read More
Nearly every VOIP related startup has their own click-to-call widget, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, and even GrandCentral. These widgets let you easily and sometimes anonymously set up a call with friends over the web. They’re very useful and come packed with features like voicemail and texting. However, each of these services connects phones to phones, which still eats away at your mobile minutes… → Read More
Jajah will be officially announcing their click-to-call buttons on Monday. The buttons, which let people call the owner for free and anonymously, have been quietly in private beta over the past year. They are also taking on international calling card services and Jaxtr and Jangl, who already have click-to-call offerings on social networks and dating sites. The call buttons are available to… → Read More
While the consumer “landline replacement” VOIP battles continue to wage (the cable companies now control over 70% of that market, and Vonage is still fighting), a number of nimble software-only startups are experimenting with their own services. All of them allow users to call normal, non-VOIP telephones at greatly reduced costs. These savings can be captured whether or not the parties… → Read More
Cheapskates that we are, people are always trying to find deals, like, say, being able to make phone calls for free. Yes, that works. Over at the Times, David Pogue bravely looked at several services that offer, in one way or another, free phone calls. Skype we already know, so who cares. But there’s three other services that seem neat: Jajah.com, T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home and Ooma. → Read More
There’s a growing list of companies lining up to port their application to the iPhone’s Safari browser. Jajah is the first to bring their VOIP client to the new iPhone. iPhone’s standard contract isn’t cheap ($60 – $100/month). If you want to make international calls, you’d have to pay an extra $3.99/month and around 23 cents a minute for a call to the UK. → Read More
Earlier this month we announced VOIP startup Jajah had accepted $20 million in series C investment from Intel Capital. Tonight, Jajah has announced that they’ve added a co-lead to the round: Deutsche Telekom (T-mobile). The initial news of the investment was rushed out by Intel with Deutsche Telekom holding off announcement of their investment until today. Deutsche Telekom’s investment… → Read More
VOIP provider JAJAH closes Series C funding of $20 million today, with the lead investment coming from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel. Previous TechCrunch coverage here. As part of the deal Intel will provide JAJAH access to their community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, as well as access to Intel’s range of VOIP patents. I spoke to JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy… → Read More
A year after VOIP phone service Jajah launched their service, they’ve announced over 2 million registered users (Up from 1.2 announced in January) and officially announced Trevor Healy as the new CEO. See our consumer VOIP comparison post for an overview of Jajah and some of its competitors. Jajah is a VOIP service that gives you lower long distance rates by bridging standard phone lines… → Read More
Without a doubt, the most popular classified ads site on the Internet is Craigslist. The simple, utilitarian site is a shining example of how the p2p Web can work, and one of the secrets to its success is the anonymization of its users by email forwarding and masking. Many people who wouldn’t want their real email addresses published can use an anonymous, temporary @cragislist.org address to… → Read More
Tonight, Talkster launched a beta of a new presence-based communication platform in the VoIP market, with a focus on the enterprise and aim to connect callers by alias regardless of their device. Talkster is similar to services like Jajah, Rebtel, Hullo, ConnectMeAnywhere, and Fring in that it uses VOIP to make cheap (currently free) long distance phone calls. But those services are highly… → Read More
VOIP company Jajah just announced an exceptional new consumer service that will let many cell phone users access Jajah’s very low calling rates through their cell phone (and without using data services). Ok, it’s true. When I wrote about the woeful state of the VOIP market last week I knew full well that Jajah was preparing to launch a killer new product this evening (and Shel Israel… → Read More
A bunch of VOIP services have launched to help people make cheaper calls from normal phones. None of them are compelling for the mass market. VOIP is great when you initiate calls from VOIP phones or software (Skype, Vonage, etc.). These VOIP networks can call other VOIP phones, or patch into the normal telephone networks to make relatively inexpensive calls. Vonage long ago replaced my normal… → Read More
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