Our friends at TechCrunch announced today that Jajah has received 20 million in Series C funding. Jajah is tying to become a first tier VoIP provider – and their primary advantage is that they recognize and accept that the PSTN (publicly switched telephony network – you know, the one that gets you to any standard phone number) is the primary way customer’s use voice communicaitons today.
Additionally – and perhaps most importantly in light of the Verizon vs. Vonage patent suit, Jajah gets access to Intel’s VoIP patents. One assumes – since Jajah’s primary technical component is PSTN/VoIP interconnect – Jajah sees this as a practical MAD (mutually assured destruction) defense if targeted by Verizon or others.
Jajah is my favorite VoIP service for the average consumer… all I need is an account and a regular phone. Since the VoIP portion is “inside” Jajah they have far better quality than Skype, Gizmo, etc.
That being said, Jajah is still a simple cost reduction play (now I can make phone calls for less). While their add on features are nice… they are far from innovative.