Next-gen IP telephony start-ups team up
Start-up IP telephony providers Jajah and Jangl are teaming up to take on the competition, the companies said Thursday.
The companies are part of a new generation of voice-over IP providers that have crept up recently hoping to replicate the success story of Skype, which was bought by eBay two years ago for $2.6 billion. The market is already crowded with dozens of these small players. Typically at this stage of the game, start-ups are too busy duking it out against each to forge partnerships, but executives at Jajah and Jangl say it makes sense for them to partner even though some of their products may overlap.
"It is rare to see companies at this stage do something like this," said Michael Cerda, CEO of Jangl. "But it's such a confusing market out there and the press and VCs often lump all VoIP providers together. But our strategies and technologies are really very different. And when we sat down together, we realized they're actually complementary."
Jajah is focused on providing low-cost international calling. Already it has the ability to terminate calls or transfer calls from the Internet to the local telephone network in more than 122 countries around the world. Earlier this year it received funding from the German phone company Deutsche Telekom. And it has ambitions to grow into a major telecommunications platform provider in the future.
Jangl, on the other hand, is focused on providing secure phone calling for social-networking and dating Web sites. The service essentially provides alternative local phone numbers that can mask a person's actual phone number, so that they don't have to give out a personal telephone number to strangers.
But while their focuses may be different, Cerda and Frederik Hermann, director of global marketing for Jajah, say they see benefits in working together for both companies. For example, Jajah is about to launch an in-call advertising platform. The way it works is when a user is being connected to a call, he has the option of listening to a short 10-second advertisement. As a reward for listening to the commercial, the user earns credit, which can be used to defray the cost of making future calls over the Jajah network.
Jangl, which claims to be on some 40 million social-networking profiles on sites such as Match.com, says it brings an important target audience to advertisers because its service is already integrated into the media-rich social-networking world.
"Jajah brings the ads and we bring the customers," Cerda said.
Also as part of the deal, Jangl will be able to terminate calls onto the regular phone network from the Internet in all of Jajah's 122 countries. Today Jangl only offers termination service in 32 countries.
"Over the past two years, we've built a huge back-end system for terminating calls all over the world," Hermann said. "So we're able to allow Jangl to use that resource and we recover a small margin on that."
But Jajah and Jangl's main competitor Jaxtr says the companies are merely running scared. "I see it simply as the weak banding together," said Konstantin Guericke, CEO of Jaxtr.
One thing is for certain, partnerships are tough to manage no matter the size or stage of growth of the companies involved. But who knows? Maybe this partnership will be a prelude to a merger. Executives from Jajah and Jangl haven't ruled out the possibility, but they each say it's not on the table right now.
"Merging the two companies might make sense at some other juncture in the future," Cerda said. "But both companies are still so young. And they have something they want to be when they grow up. And we have something we want to be when we grow up."
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
This is what I've been sending them:
1. Some days ago I was charging my account and wanted to credit only 10 euros, but instead ended up crediting 50 euros because of the way the top up works. I cannot afford to spend this much money in one go. Hence I would like you to reverse part of the credit, leaving about 10 euros in my account.
It would be better if you have a confirmation screen, which asks for user confirmation before processing a payment. Any website which requires payment always has a confirmation screen showing clearly the final amount to be charged BEFORE such a charge is made. This is clearly a shortcoming with your site, and something which would have prevented me overcharging my account.
2. It is strange that you store user credit card information and do not have a way to remove it. I should have a choice to remove any and all credit card information from your website. This is a violation of my privacy rights and for this alone I can take you to court.
3. The top-up function does not work correctly, because of which I had problem #1 that I've already noted above. There is no way to turn off top off. If I uncheck the box, I need to click on "pay now" and then the amount gets charged without any user confirmation. This is clearly an unfair trade practice.
I'm sorry for the problems your were experiencing and apologize for the inconvenience caused.
I can assure you that we gonna reimburse you and take your feedback regarding the confirmation screen and auto-topup feature for serious. I will also check back with our customer support team what might have gone wrong regarding your reply - did you write in in German?
I also want to assure you that Jajah has absolutely no intention to deceive you in any way, we are treating the data and payments of our millions of Jajah users with the highest security and care.
Please drop me a quick note at frederik[at]jajah[dot]com with the email address you are registered with at Jajah (in German or English) and I will personally take care of it tomorrow morning.
Best,
Frederik Hermann
Director of Global Marketing
JAJAH Inc.
- And back to Jajah
- by zehawk March 17, 2008 4:57 PM PDT
- Mr Frederik Hermann,
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(4 Comments)Thank you for getting back to me. It is indeed sad that I tried every way to contact Jajah, and heard no reply until I posted against Jajah all over Internet forums, and in every news article on Jajah that I could find. And suddenly I hear from you, from Shaherose, from your customer service, et al. Anyway, too late. I've stopped using Jajah and shifted over to Mobivox, more power to them.
Did I write in German? No, most probably in Greek, much good it did to me. Bah.