Jajah
Encyclopedia
Jajah is a VoIP  provider, founded by Austrians
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

 Roman Scharf
Roman Scharf
Roman Scharf is a businessman, investor and one of the co-founders of VoIP company Jajah.- Biography :Austrian Roman Scharf graduated from Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, receiving an excellency award from the European Commission for his thesis on "Environmental...

 and Daniel Mattes
Daniel Mattes
Daniel Mattes , called "Bill Gates of the Alps", is a serial Internet entrepreneur and business angel living in Silicon Valley, USA and Austria, Europe. He is the founder and CEO of the online payment company Jumio. In March 2011 Jumio announced closing of its $6.5m round of financing, led by...

 in 2005. The Jajah headquarters are located in Mountain View, CA, USA, and Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...

. Jajah maintains a development centre in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. On 23 December 2009, it was announced that Jajah had been bought by Telefónica
Telefónica
Telefónica, S.A. is a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider in Europe and Latin America. Operating globally, it is the third largest provider in the world...

 through its subsidiary Telefónica Europe.

Jajah's primary service, Jajah Web, takes an approach called web-activated telephony
Telephony
In telecommunications, telephony encompasses the general use of equipment to provide communication over distances, specifically by connecting telephones to each other....

, using VoIP to connect traditional phones (landline or mobile). Calls are made without download or user-installed software, and in most cases at rates lower than those of traditional phone companies or even free of charge.

The company’s competitors include Ribbit
Ribbit (telecommunications company)
Ribbit is a telecommunications company based in Mountain View, California. It was acquired by BT Group on 2008-07-29 for $105 million.On August 10, 2011, Ribbit announced it was closing most of its external-facing operations and developer program within a couple of months.The company’s goal is to...

 and IntelePeer
IntelePeer
IntelePeer, Inc. is a privately held company based in San Mateo, California who provides on-demand cloud-based communications services to service providers and enterprises.The company’s competitors include Ribbit and Jajah....

.

History

  • Jajah was founded in 2005 by Roman Scharf and Daniel Mattes.

  • The first beta version of the Jajah Webphone, a proprietary peer-to-peer
    Peer-to-peer
    Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

     internet telephony (VoIP) softphone, was released in July 2005.

  • February 8, 2006 Jajah Web version 1.0 (build 1708) released.

  • September 12, 2006 Jajah Web version 1.1 (build 1714) including conference calls

  • September 27, 2007 Jajah launches a solution named "Jajah Buttons" which enables small businesses or individuals to embed buttons on their Web sites to allow others to contact them by phone using the company's Internet telephony platform. Jajah Buttons caused a notable controversy when eBay
    EBay
    eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

     removed and banned such buttons from auction listings in eBay's site, presumably to protect revenues from its own VOIP solution provided by Skype
    Skype
    Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...

    .

  • November 19, 2007 Jajah launches the Jajah Direct service, which enables users to make phone calls without having to be next to a computer. Jajah Direct is a phone service that allows you to make long-distance or international calls by calling a local number, it works with every phone. There are no free calls using this service.

  • April 28, 2008 Jajah provides its proprietary telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care to Yahoo! Messenger
    Yahoo! Messenger
    Yahoo! Messenger is an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!...

     users using the platform for receiving calls from the PSTN network, or for making calls to land lines and mobile phones.

  • December 23, 2009. Telefónica buys Jajah for a reported $207 million.

  • April 14, 2011. Jajah announced a partnership with Globe Telecom to allow Filipinos living outside Philippines to call home at inexpensive rate.

Jajah Web

Jajah Web connects existing traditional landline
Landline
A landline was originally an overland telegraph wire, as opposed to an undersea cable. Currently, landline refers to a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fibre, as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, where transmission is via radio waves...

 or mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s with calls that are set up via Jajah's Web site. Jajah claims that their service works with any standard web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

.

Jajah Free Global Calling

Jajah launched a service offering free calls globally on June 27, 2006. The service is limited to specified geographic areas, and Jajah has also adopted a fair use policy which limits the amount of free Jajah calls.

Calls between registered Jajah users are free of charge for landline and mobile calls within the USA, Canada, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and apply also for landline calls to and within most European countries as well as Argentina, Australia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico City, New Zealand, Venezuela and Zambia.

A limitation is that scheduled calls and conference calls cannot be free. In addition, Jajah's FAQ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...

 pages says that Jajah asks its customers to pay from time to time (every six weeks). If you choose not to pay, Jajah will start charging as it would for a normal call. It should also be noted that the lowest amount that can be credited to your account (every six weeks, if you want to retain the free minutes) is $10.

Facebook Calling

In April 2011, Jajah introduced a VoIP
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...

 application for Android phones that can be used with Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

contacts.

Technology

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