Jajah was a

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

(

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of speech, voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms In ...

) provider, founded by

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Roman Scharf and

Daniel Mattes Daniel Mattes (born 14 November 1972) is an Austrian internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the founder and was CEO of Artificial Intelligence company 42.cx and a judge and business angel on the Austrian television show '2 Minuten ...

in 2005. The Jajah headquarters was located in

Mountain View, CA Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

, USA, and

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

. Jajah maintained a development centre in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

. On 23 December 2009, it was announced that Jajah had been bought by

Telefónica Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...

through its subsidiary

Telefónica Europe O2 (typeset as O2) is a global brand name owned by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica. The company uses the O2 brand for its subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Germany. Since 2018, it is also used as an online-only flanker br ...

. In December 2013, Telefónica announced that Jajah would shut down at the end of January 2014.Telefonica to Shut Down VoIP provider Jajah on January 31, 2014
/ref> Jajah's primary service, Jajah Web, took an approach called web-activated

telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunication services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is i ...

, using VoIP to connect traditional phones (landline or mobile). Calls were made without

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote s ...

or user-installed

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, and in most cases at rates lower than those of traditional phone companies or even free of charge. The company's competitors included

Ribbit Ribbit may refer to: * Onomatopoeia for the sound that a frog makes. * Ribbit (Pillow Pal), a plush toy frog made by Ty, Inc. * Ribbit (telecommunications company), a telecommunications company based in Mountain View, California, acquired by BT Gr ...

Matt Marshall, VentureBeat. �
IntelePeer raises $18M for telephony-Web platform
” November 11, 2008. Retrieved July 10, 2009. and

IntelePeer IntelePeer is a privately held company based in Dania Beach, Florida and is a Communications Automation Platform (CAP) provider of voice, messaging, automation, applications, APIs, and analytics for enterprises. The company is backed by venture ...

.Om Malik, New York Times. �
Why IntelePeer Snagged $18 Million in Funding
” November 11, 2008. Retrieved July 13, 2009.

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 (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

internet telephony (VoIP) softphone, was released in July 2005. Jajah Web version 1.0 (build 1708) released February 8, 2006. Jajah Web version 1.1 (build 1714) including conference calls was released September 12, 2006. On 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 Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

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 () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

. On November 19, 2007, Jajah launched the Jajah Direct service, which enables users to make phone calls without having to be next to a computer.Kristen Nicole, Mashable.
Jajah Direct. No Internet Connection Necessary.
" November 18, 2007. Retrieved January 23, 2012.TMCNet.
Jajah Direct Launches
" November 18, 2007. Retrieved January 23, 2012. 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. On April 28, 2008 Jajah provideds its proprietary telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care to

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client (computing), client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used wit ...

users using the platform for receiving calls from the

PSTN The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local teleph ...

network, or for making calls to land lines and mobile phones. Telefónica bought Jajah for a reported $207 million on December 23, 2009. On April 14, 2011, Jajah announced a partnership with Globe Telecom to allow Filipinos living outside Philippines to call home at inexpensive rate. It announced November 30, 2012 that effective January 30, 2013, Yahoo! Messenger will no longer offer Yahoo! Voice Phone In and Phone Out capabilities, the co-branded landline and mobile phone service from Jajah. On January 31, 2014, Jajah will no longer offer any Jajah.com or Jajah Direct services to its users in the United States or elsewhere.

Jajah Web

Jajah Web connected existing traditional

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s with calls that are set up via Jajah's Web site. Jajah claimed that their service worked with any standard

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

Jajah Direct

Jajah Direct assigned local numbers to international contacts.

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 were free of charge for landline and mobile calls within the US, 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 pages said that Jajah asks its customers to pay from time to time (every six weeks). If the user chose not to pay, Jajah would start charging as it would for a normal call. The lowest amount that could be credited to a user account (every six weeks, to retain the free minutes) was $10.

Facebook Calling

In April 2011, Jajah introduced a

application for

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

phones that can be used with

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

contacts.Jason Kincaid, Techcrunch.
Jajah Brings Its Facebook Calling To Android, iPhone Coming Soon
" April 12, 2011. Retrieved April 12, 2011.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://jajah.com/ VoIP companies of the United States Symbian software Internet properties established in 2005 Internet properties disestablished in 2007 Defunct VoIP companies