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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 phone at local rates.  The product will be powered by Jajah, but customers will be seeing the O2 brand.

This is interesting for a few reasons.  First, it’s obviously a fairly speedy integration given the size of O2.  Jajah CEO Trevor Healy also says that this marks the first time that a global carrier is offering a VoIP-powered service to its subscribers — he explains that O2 is willing to embrace the ‘Silicon Valley approach’ to digital communications, as opposed to holding steadfast to tradional voice services.  Here’s to hoping the US carriers follow suit.

O2 says it will be rolling out further Jajah-powered features in the next few months (presumably including a rollout of Global Friends to countries outside of Germany).  O2 has 54 million subscribers across Europe.

Jajah (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/jajah)

Website: jajah.com (http://jajah.com/) 
Location: Mountain View, California, United States
Founded: January 1, 2005
Acquired: December 20, 2009 by O2 (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/o2) for $207M 

Jajah is a VoIP service that gives you lower long distance rates by bridging standard phone lines with a cheaper VoIP alternative. You can place Jajah calls by clicking on your contacts through their website (desktop and mobile), various browser… Learn more (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/jajah).

O2 (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/o2)

Website: o2.co.uk (http://www.o2.co.uk/) 
Location: United Kingdom

O2 is a leading provider of mobile and broadband services to consumers and businesses in the UK. The company is the leader in non-voice services, including text, media messaging, games, music and video, as well as data connections via GPRS, HSDPA, 3G… Learn More (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/o2)

Source:-   techcrunch (http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/15/jajah-now-powers-low-cost-long-distance-for-german-o2-subscribers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29).

This is a similar offer to the UK "International friends and family" deal, though the UK version (that is now discontinued), was considerably better value for lower useage.

From what I can make out, (The link is  http://tlnt.at/9ifiAA) with the German offer you can select 5 international numbers (2 can be mobiles) that like with the UK offer you access via a short bridging number. The calls are charged at standard domestic rates until you hit a 50 Euro price-cap. After this, all further calls that month are free.

50 Euros is a lot lot more than what the offer cost us here... which was described and discussed in this thread: http://www.foneforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,1367

petkow!

You're probably refering to mh's post here (http://www.foneforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,1367.msg6784.html#msg6784) - not Doondie's off topic one  ;)

At the moment jajha has been started in Germany, and the similar service you are talking about was also from jajha but they clearly mentioned that was a beta service and they launched it only for experimental purpose, unfortunately they did experiment in UK and they launched the service properly in Germany. Hopefully as they have contract with O2 Europe, they may gonna launch again in UK, but as per your information of 50 Euro, the expected service could be up to £40/- that is not worth for 5 numbers! I do not know the competition statistics of Germany, but if they launch any similar service in UK this should be under £15/- then they may can attract the customer!

Regards,

gb

Oops. Thanks. My mistake. I have corrected it now.