GigaOM » Jajah

Telefonica’s O2 Tries Its Hand At Skype-Like VoIP Calls With O2 Connect

Ingrid Lunden — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:49:27 +0000

T-Mobile has Bobsled in the U.S., and now O2 in the UK is jumping into the Internet-calling waters with a new service called O2 Connect.

O2 Connect, which is first being launched as a limited trial in the UK, is the first product to come out of Telefonica Digital. This is the new unit set up by O2′s parent company Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) to drive more innovative digital services centrally that can be implemented across the whole of Telefonica’s footprint, which spans from mobile and fixed operations in Latin America through to Europe.

Both Bobsled — a free fixed and mobile internet calling service that T-Mobile is using as a way to reach out to consumers that are not already on its network — and O2 Connect are drawing on inspiration from Skype, the internet-based calling service that has make big inroads into wireless services through its multiple mobile apps. Skype is currently leading the pack of similar services, and is in the process of getting acquired by Microsoft.

While Skype was once seen as a threat to the mobile operators — many of whom went so far as to block the service outright — today’s approach from O2 underscores the change that has taken place as networks have become faster, consumers have become more price-conscious and tech-savvy, and operators have decided to follow the old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Unlike Bobsled, it looks like O2 Connect is a product intended specifically for O2′s existing customers, and it will only work over WiFi networks. That could mean whatever usage O2 gets from this service will not necessarily affect the revenues it gets from its subscribers for other services such as voice or data.

In its initial form, it will offer users a mobile app, for either iOS or Android platforms, which will work over WiFi networks to give the user free calls and texts to any other UK mobile or fixed line. According to the FT, a customer can use the app on any supported device, and it will still appear as if the call is coming from that person’s own mobile number. This technology was originally developed by Jajah, an internet telephony company that O2 acquired in 2007 for $206 million.

Support for more platforms is apparently in the works, and the intention is to take the service into Telefonica’s other markets.

This is not the first VoIP experiment that has come out of O2 Labs, which is now part of Telefonica Digital. Social Call is an app, also for O2 users, that lets users call their Facebook friends from their mobiles, as long as they are logged into Facebook’s Chat service. That’s very similar to what T-Mobile’s Bobsled offers, except that O2 charges the price of a normal call for each connection a user makes.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:01:22 +0000

As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

How to save money on phone calls when traveling

Om Malik — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:09:22 +0000

If you are someone who is always on the move and spends a lot of time on the phone, then those phone bills stack up. In this age of mobile VoIP that shouldn’t be the case, but it does. This infographic from Essential Travel magazine will get you started. (hat tip, Andy Abramson.)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

O2/Telefónica Buys Jajah for $207M

Om Malik — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:14:41 +0000

Telefónica, the parent company of O2, today announced the acquisition of Jajah for €145 million (about $207 million) in an all-cash transaction. The company had raised $35 million from various investors including Deutsche Telekom, Intel Capital and Sequoia Capital. The rumors of this deal emerged earlier this month. You can read my post, “Why O2 Wants to Buy Jajah,” to get a better understanding of the deal.

Matthew Key, chairman and CEO of Telefónica Europe, said in a press statement: “The acquisition of Jajah broadens the scope of our communications offering and opens up new capabilities in the voice communication space.” Jajah will continue to operate as a standalone brand, reporting to Telefónica Europe, which will offer Jajah services to its customers.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Latest on O2-Jajah Deal: Not Done Yet

Om Malik — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:38:02 +0000

Yesterday, rumors were flying that O2, a division of Telefonica, a large Spanish phone company, was buying Israel-based VoIP company Jajah for about $200 million. Last night I explained that it’s actually a good idea for O2 to buy the upstart, mostly because it (and its parent) have the scale to leverage Jajah’s virtual network and platform.

Of course when I heard about the rumor, I reached out to sources in Israel. When I woke up this morning, I’d heard back from them with new information: first of all, the deal isn’t done just yet. And according to my Israeli grapevine, the price is not $200 million and might be north of $100 million. I will keep you posted.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Why O2 Wants to Buy Jajah

Om Malik — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:34:40 +0000

O2, a division of Telefonica, a Spanish telecommunications company, is in talks to acquire Jajah, a VoIP startup, for about $200 million, Reuters reported today. The company had raised $35 million from various investors including Deutsche Telekom, Intel Capital and Sequoia Capital. According to some rumors, Microsoft and Cisco Systems were also bidding for Jajah, which has had its shares of ups and downs.

The company is over 4 years old and started out as a wannabe Skype killer that offered cheap calls. It tried to do everything — partners with media companies offer cheaper plans, but it never really got the traction it needed to kill Skype. Even today Jajah has only about 25 million subscribers who use its Internet phone service for placing dirt-cheap calls across the globe. In comparison, Skype has over half a billion users.

However, Jajah’s struggles didn’t prevent it from building its own virtual network with special VoIP servers across the planet, connected through leased fiber connections. It also connects with various PSTN networks (see map). Think of it as a virtual global phone company that allows it to route calls from one place, say New York, to another like Shanghai, at ultra-low prices.

Jajah also has built a software layer that can be used to offer add-on applications such as click-to-call to wholesale customers. The company’s platform not only marries web with voice, but also provides vital features such as real-time billing. This approach struck a chord both with tiny startups and large companies like Yahoo and AOL.

For O2/Telefonica, it makes perfect sense to buy a service such as Jajah. Some reasons I can think of just off the bat:

Cheap international calling plans are a way to retain/attract new customers. Telefonica has a strong presence in Latin America, and Jajah’s network can be a good way to increase its share of voice minutes.
Jajah’s VoIP platform can be used to essentially turn O2 into a long-distance voice company.
Like BT which bought Ribbit, O2 could rethink its approach to the voice business and start focusing on how it can marry voice with web/mobile apps.
These mobile applications could then leverage not only Jajah’s platform but also O2’s next-generation wireless broadband networks that use Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology.

If you have additional thoughts on why O2 should buy this company, let us know. I obviously think it’s a good idea, but if you have a counterargument, I’d love to hear it.

Photo of Jajah at eComm 09 by James Duncan Davidson for Jajah via Flickr

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

StatShot: 27% Access Twitter Via Apps

Jennifer Martinez — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:00:11 +0000

Twitter-focused applications are sprouting up everywhere these days — among them TweetDeck, Twhirl and Kutano — and they’re proving to be popular. Some 27 percent of Twitter users said they primarily access the micromessaging network using such apps, according to an inaugural study released today by Crowd Science, a technology research company.

Among some of the other notable findings in the study: Four in 10 Twitter users said they prefer contacting friends using social media than over the phone (which could either hurt or help Jajah’s @Call offering, which uses the company’s VoIP service to let users call friends for free via the Twitter network.) And in line with previous results from the Harvard Business School, the study found that on a daily basis, only a quarter of Twitter users tweet while 46 percent check status updates. Additionally, 24 percent of registered Twitter users have either stopped tweeting since they first signed up or have never tweeted at all.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Jajah Lets You Make Calls via Twitter

Jennifer Martinez — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:16:38 +0000

Jajah is privately launching in beta today a voice-over-IP solution that lets people make calls for free via micromessaging site Twitter and other Twitter-related desktop and mobile applications. This is another effort by Jajah to get its VoIP service onto a popular application; last year, the company forged a partnership with Yahoo to offer its voice services to Yahoo IM users.

When 140 characters isn’t cutting it, simply send a tweet to the person you want to talk to using the format “@call @username.” Jajah will then call your phone and once you pick up, will connect you to your friend. To use Jajah’s @Call service, however, both you and your friend must be registered in the company’s beta group and the person you’re calling must follow you on Twitter. For now, calls can only be two minutes long and only U.S. numbers are supported. Jajah keeps users’ phone numbers private, so you don’t have to worry about anyone getting their hands on personal contact information. The @Call service is compatible with a host of Twitter applications, including Seesmic, Echofon (formerly Twitterfon) and Twitroid.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Jajah isn’t the only company to bring VoIP to a social site. Earlier this week, Vivox privately launched in beta a web voice service for Facebook that lets people have a voice chat with any of their friends on the social network. Users have to download a plug-in to use the service.

The launch of these voice services for social networks have generated a healthy amount of buzz on the web, and only time will tell whether Twitter and Facebook will embed them into their platforms. While these click-to-call services aren’t the sexiest of applications, they’re useful and continue to encourage us to live our social lives on the web.

Image courtesy of Jajah

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

JAJAH Can Transform Your iPod Touch Into an iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:01:41 +0000

With the introduction of microphone support and an external speaker, the gap between the iPhone and the iPod touch was becoming increasingly narrow. It was really only a matter of time before it happened, but one company, JAJAH is now claiming to have bridged the space between the two, and brought phone features to the iPod touch, going beyond what even existing VoIP apps have done in the past.

Specifically, JAJAH will allow you to not only make calls with your iPod touch, but also send and receive text messages. Of course, since the device lacks any kind of cellular antenna, you’ll have to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot in order to use JAJAH’s phone features. You’ll also have to have an iPod headset with Mic, and you aren’t actually able to do any of this yet, because JAJAH is not currently available in the App Store. Just like the MMS solution we covered before, JAJAH is a white label service that will be offered for sale to other companies.

Companies who do purchase JAJAH’s white-label goods will get everything, from a custom-branded app to payment infrastructure. The idea is that an interested company will take the product, turn around, and sell air time or service bundles to consumers. In their press release, JAJAH mentions students as a potentially lucrative target market, since they seem to always have Wi-Fi access and they have ample reason to use an affordable long distance solution.

I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but I’m not entirely sure this kind of thing will get App Store approval, although JAJAH seems pretty confident. They do suggest in their materials that carriers might want to offer this to extend their reach beyond iPhone owners, but I think they’ll be far more likely to pressure Apple into blocking the release of these kinds of apps where iPhones are sold.

On the other hand, it could be an opportunity to grab long distance customers from traditional, land-line based phone companies, since many now only have a home phone for those types of calls. If rates are good enough, people could end up buying iPod touch talk time instead of using long distance cards, which would appeal to students, businesspeople, and international travelers.

Apple could end up approving the apps because of the potential revenue they stand to gain from iPod touch purchases encouraged by the additional service, but it’ll depend on how much they think they stand to lose from cannibalized iPhone sales. Whatever happens, nice to know the ability is out there, just waiting for corporate buy-in.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

How to Build the Perfect Set-Top Box

Liane Cassavoy — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:35:45 +0000

It’s the holidays — a time to give, right? Right. Which is why I’m making a list of what I’d like someone to give me this year. This isn’t a gift guide (I’ve already written one of those), but more of a fantasy. I’m making a list of all the features I’d like to see in the perfect set-top box.

What does the perfect set-top box do, you ask? A little bit of everything: It’s a DVR that records my favorite shows. It’s a media extender that lets me watch the video content I have stored on my PC. In a true fantasy world, it also replaces my cable box (but still lets me access my cable provider’s On Demand library) and plays back Blu-ray Discs.

Remember, this is a fantasy. I know that it’s not possible to get everything I want; some of the technology is simply not ready. But some of these features should already be options, such as the first item on my list:

EASY SET-UP/NETWORK CONNECTIONS: It shouldn’t take four days, a box of power tools, and repeated calls to tech support to install anything — never mind a gadget that I’m going to use to watch TV.

It should connect to my network easily. I’ll take a good wireless connection, but if you’re going to make me type my passcode on the screen, use common sense. Don’t slap a virtual phone keypad up on a big TV screen (I’m talking to you, Kiwi); just give me a nice, big keyboard that I can navigate easily. If wireless doesn’t work, I’ll gladly use a powerline ethernet extender — as long as it’s included. I don’t want to pay $100 extra for it. And I don’t want to invest in an ethernet cord that’s 100 feet long.

A SOLID, SENSIBLE REMOTE: Don’t give me a flimsy piece of plastic with hard-to-press buttons. Take a good look at the TiVo remote control. It’s comfortable in your hand and easy to figure out. Plus it has the cute peanut shape. (Hey, looks matter!)

A GOOD-LOOKING, LOGICAL INTERFACE: Speaking of TiVo, let’s talk about the user interface. Make it lively, just don’t go overboard — and don’t leave me with a DOS-like interface, either. Menus should be logically laid out. So should the search function. If I search by show title, the results should be show titles — not actor names. (Now I’m talking to you, Verizon FiOS DVR.)

Another request: Make it difficult to accidentally delete shows. (I am still talking to you, Verizon FiOS. I still haven’t forgiven you for allowing me to delete that episode of Mad Men when I meant to zap the Barney my kids had watched…repeatedly.)

INTERNET ACCESS: Luckily, I got that episode of Mad Men online, but I had to watch it on my laptop. With my new set-top box, I could stream it right to my big-screen TV — in HD — for it would let me scroll through the contents of my computer and play back any audio, video or image files. File compatibility is not an issue in my fantasy world, and HD files look just as good on my big-screen TV as they do on my itty-bitty laptop.

Oh, and when I access these files, don’t mess with the aspect ratio. Too many media extenders shrink or expand video windows in ways that leave the content unwatchable.

I also want access to web sites that play back videos, like Hulu and ABC.com — and I want to watch their videos in HD, please. I’d also appreciate a nice interface that would help me keep these sites organized. And a scheduling guide would be great. ABC is pretty prompt about posting its recent episodes online, but the CW, not so much. That’s why I’d like an alert when they finally get around to making the last Gossip Girl episode available.

LOOKS DO MATTER: I want both a good-looking interface and remote, but don’t stop there. I want the whole device to be attractive and as small as possible. I know it has to be big enough to hold a hard drive, a fan, and the Blu-ray drive. But it should be a simple, sleek box that won’t look out of place sitting next to a big-screen TV. Talk to the people at Sling Media; they know how to design attractive set-top boxes.

WHAT I DON’T WANT: I don’t want ( or need) a full-fledged web browser; I’m not interested in seeing my Facebook page on a big-screen TV. And I don’t need any on-screen chat features to appear while I’m watching my shows.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things, but all of these features are a pretty strong start on the perfect set-top box. I know we’re not likely to see this product anytime soon. But here’s hoping some of this fantasy will become reality in 2009.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.