Telef³nica is soon going to launch its new web call service, in competition with Skype in the market through the Spanish telecoms group’s purchase of Jajah, a Silicon Valley-based internet phone company.
O2, Telef³nica’s UK mobile phone business, is launching a low-cost international calls service for its customers this week. The service has been developed by Jajah, which Telef³nica bought for $207 million in January.
Jajah’s cheap international calls service was first launched at Telef³nica’s German mobile unit in July, and the Spanish group plans to introduce similar arrangements at five of its Latin American businesses next year.
Calling people abroad was usually very expensive, but Skype, made it possible for people to talk wherever and whenever over the past seven years by offering free or low-cost calls.
Skype and other companies using VoIP (voice over internet protocol) technology are now starting to dent mobile operators’ revenues derived from phone calls as these services are moving to smartphones enable calls to be made using the data portion of customers’ handset tariffs.
Jajah also uses VoIP technology, but Trevor Healy, the company’s chief executive, claimed its phone service offered higher quality calls compared with Skype’s.
According to Healy, customers at Telef³nica’s German mobile unit were signing up to Jajah’s low-cost international calls service at a rate of 800 a day. Mr Healy described this as amazing given there had been no marketing campaign.
By focusing on Germany and the UK, Telef³nica is launching Jajah’s products initially in countries where it has limited fixed-line operations.