After more than a week of speculation about its future—including reports of
interest from Cisco Systems and Microsoft—VOIP vendor Jajah is being bought by
Telefonica Europe.
Telefonica, known better by the name O2, announced Dec. 23 that it is buying
the smaller Silicon Valley company for $207 million in
cash.
Telefonica officials said adding Jajah's technology to its portfolio will
broaden the range of communications services the company can offer. It also "opens
up new capabilities in the voice communication space. People using social
networking sites such as Twitter now have an even wider range of communications
channels available—and have the option of speaking directly to each other as
well as communicating by text or keyboard," Matthew Key, chairman and CEO
of Telefonica Europe, said in a statement.
The deal needs the approval of the CNC, Spain's
competition agency, according to Telefonica.
Officials say Jajah's IP Communications Platform enables consumers and businesses
to communicate via the Internet using any device and any network. Jajah's
services can be found integrated into a range of social media and instant
messaging offerings. For example, the company in September announced the beta
of its Jajah@call Twitter service, which enables Twitter account holders to
make free calls through Twitter.
Jajah's offerings also can be bought by consumers directly from the company.
According to Telefonica, millions of people use Jajah in about 200
countries.
"This is a very exciting union of a young, innovative company with one
of the largest integrated communications companies in the world," Jajah CEO
Trevor Healy said in a statement.
The mobile voice-over-IP market could eventually be a rapidly growing one,
but won't take off for a few more years, according to research company Gartner.
In May, Gartner analysts said the growth of mobile VOIP services eventually
will threaten traditional network-based mobile carriers, but it will take time.
Mass adoption won't happen until 4G networks are more completely implemented in
2017.
However, Gartner is predicting that by 2019 more than half of mobile voice
traffic will be via VOIP networks.
VoIP Solutions, IP Telephony and Unified Communications News & Reviews 
