Previously, the JaJah app for the iPhone was used as a middleman to connect people on VoIP to your cellphone, but it still required a mobile plan, and used minutes. Now, the Jajah app works entirely over wi-fi, meaning you can use the iPod touch, and make calls without a mobile plan. It also works on the iPhone, but won't work over 3G or EDGE, because then AT&T wouldn't make any money.

The strength of this Jajah app is simplicity, and that is a good thing. It doesn't try to work with a million different communication services (such as Fring or IM+), and it maintains much of Mobile OS X's design DNA. This makes the app extremely easy to use.

Placing a call is as simple as selecting a contact from your list, or bringing up the dialpad and entering a number. Similarly, sending a text over IP (handy for international SMS) looks like it's pretty much the same as sending a normal SMS, except that you're inside the JaJah app. I got to see the UI for sending an SMS, but because the service isn't set up yet, I didnt get to see it go through.

As for call quality, voices sounds a tad on the tinny side, but not to the extent that I would say it's bad quality. There's also a few seconds of lag while the data passes through JaJah's servers, yet that's no huge surprise either.

The cool thing is that JaJah would like to work with Mobile Carriers on branded solutions, and expect carriers to offer flat rate VoIP service using the JaJah technology. This means you wouldn't need to buy minutes, you'd just pay one dollar amount every month for unlimited use. In any case, VoIP junkies should look at JaJah when it comes out in a few weeks.

To use JaJah on your iPod touch, all you need is a wi-fi connection, and a compatible headset so you can talk. Calls can be placed to any phone, anywhere, you can send and recieve SMS messages over IP, and you can even have a real number assigned to your iPod touch that let's you receive calls from any phone.

As for service, you can either purchase call minutes through JaJah, or soon enough, they'll make their service available to mobile carriers, letting them use the technology under their own name, letting customers deal with a company they already know. JaJah says pricing for the iPod touch service will be the same as the rest of their devices, which is to say about 3 cents/minute to other people in the US, and as low as 3.4 cents/minute in parts of Europe.

The App isn't out quite yet, but JaJah expects to have it ready as a free download in the coming weeks. [JaJah]

JAJAH Turns iPod Touch Into an iPhone
White Label Solution Enables Any Carrier to Provide High Quality Calls and text Messaging via the iPod Touch

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — February 5, 2009 — JAJAH, the leading IP telecommunications company, today announced a complete revamp of the iPod touch, turning the device into a fully functioning mobile phone for consumers. The new capability, available as a white label solution, enables carriers as well as non-carriers to launch the service under their own brand and provide their customers with the ability to make low-cost phone calls and send SMS text messages to any phone in the world from their iPod touch. To use the service, end users only require an iPod touch and a Wi-Fi connection, with no need for a SIM card or contract.

Move over, iPhone
The iPod touch is one of the most popular consumer devices in the world for music, entertainment, Web-browsing and now, making phone calls.

"Millions of people around the world already have an iPod touch in their pocket. With JAJAH's solution, any company can turn their customers' iPod touch into a fully functioning mobile phone," said Trevor Healy, CEO, JAJAH. "The device is particularly popular amongst students, who live in a world where Wi-Fi access is always available and, like everyone, they are looking to save costs, so this is a perfect solution."

JAJAH's next generation IP communications platform gives its partners everything they need to launch the service immediately. This includes the application itself, plus the entire suite of management services, from termination of the calls and quality control, right through to billing and processing payments in 200 countries around the world.

Given the economic downturn, consumers are seeking ways to make calls on any mobile device they own, as inexpensively as possible. "Offering a turnkey solution provides iPod touch users with added value," said Jon Arnold, principal analyst of J Arnold & Associates. "This is a prime example of how JAJAH's innovative platform helps carriers differentiate their services."

Connection made easy ...
Anyone with the latest version of the iPod touch will be able to download the service from the Apple App Store. With a microphone headset (available from Apple), users will immediately be able to make calls and send SMS messages from their device from any Wi-Fi network in the world. Calling costs will be up to 98 percent cheaper than existing rates on mobile networks, and in many cases could be free.

A platform for everyone (else)
JAJAH's plug-and-play IP platform is the only service that provides the full suite of services required to develop, deploy and monetize IP communication services anywhere in the world. The JAJAH platform is used by a number of the world's largest companies including Intel, Yahoo! and Comcast, and allows any company to offer value-added-services (VAS) to their customer base with no upfront payment or development work, saving millions for its customers and ensuring partners are prepared for the next generation of service provision.

JAJAH continues to develop innovative communications services. In the coming months the company will announce a range of new data communication services, applications and partnerships. For more information, please visit: www.jajah.com.

You hit the person you want, then Jajah calls you back and acts as the middleman, using VoIP to connect you to the other party's landline. You are still using your plan's minutes on top of Jajah's VoIP rates, so it makes no sense to use this for calls within the US. While calling cards provide less expensive options to communicate with people overseas, you don't always have a card. This is more of an option of convenience, letting you worry about things other than calling card PIN numbers.

Another advantage is that Jajah members may also call other Jajah members for free, that is, without paying the VoIP service fee. While Jajah's product is far from perfect, it's a start. Personally, I won't even consider using it until they lower the price of calling Djibouti from $13.77/minute. [Jajah]

Now Jajah's taken their mobile web page and made it PSP compatible. Now, this doesn't quite mean that you can make calls with your PSP. It just means you can use your PSP with Wi-Fi and initiate a Jajah call to go to your cellphone. Useful if you're using a really old phone that doesn't have at least a WAP browser. – Jason Chen

PSP (PlayStation Portable) gamers around the globe: Call with JAJAH! [Jajah]

Ordinarily there'd be no good reason to get worked up about the new Motorola VT2542 router, which Vonage is now selling for $59.99. Voice-over-data prioritization? VPN pass-through support? Puh-leez. Wake me when it can make cinnamon toast.

But these are by no means ordinary times at Vonage. America's most visible VoIPer announced the new router mere days after suffering a serious gutpunch: Verizon won a longstanding patent infringement suit against Vonage, to the tune of $58 million. A second suit brought by Sprint Nextel is winding its way through the courts, as well. As much as Vonage is trying to spin these legal woes as no big whoop, and continue on with its innovation as if all was cool, you've got to think the company's executives are none too thrilled about the situation.

The most obvious question to arise from all these suits, as well as Vonage's other troubles, is whether the company will survive. But the bigger issue for us cheapskates is what all this hullabaloo portends for the future of VoIP, the technology that rescued us from the Baby Bells' cold, brutal grip. After the jump, ruminations on who you'll be paying for phone service in 2010. PLUS: Prizes en route to my beloved beta testers.

First off, journalistic ethics mandate that I should lay bare my ties: I am a Vonage customer, though not a particularly enthusiastic one. I use their VoIP service for my home office; if number portability hadn't been a priority, I would have been happy enough sticking with my mobile and Skype (of which I'm a fan). That said, my complaints about Vonage's service mostly boil down to little things—hiccups in the connection, long stretches where I can't surf and talk at the same time. I'm by no means a member of this disgruntled clique, and Vonage has surely saved me hundreds of dollars over the last two-plus years. I was previously with Talk America (now Cavalier Telephone), and those copper-wire taxes were killing me.

The lawsuit loss to Verizon is just the latest inkling that all's not going swimmingly for Vonage. My first tip-off came last year, when I got a recorded phone call inviting me to buy into the company's IPO. When you're asking the folks who use your service to prop up your Wall Street offering, yikes, that ain't good. Then came an e-mail offer, declaring that I could save $60 by pre-paying for a year's worth of service—again, a classic sign of, if not desperation, at least distress.

It's not hard to see why Vonage is struggling: they're a classic victim of the first-mover disadvantage. When they rolled out wide, they way undercut the copper-wire alternatives. But the traditional providers have caught up, especially with those bundled phone-cable-Internet packages. Yeah, those deals still rip you off on phone service a bit, but they're easy—no worries about number portability, and a service guy will actually come to your house and install the router(s). Installation may be easy for those of us who frequent Gizmodo, but a lot of people are still freaked out by Ethernet cables, as well as by the prospect of having to deal with yet another monthly bill. Never underestimate the prevalence of both technophobia and financial anxiety.

If Vonage goes—and, in fairness, they seem pretty insistent that they're gonna fight tooth-and-nail to stay alive—I can see the VoIP market splitting one of two ways. You could see cable-based VoIP services like AT&T CallVantage win out, even going so far as buying Vonage's entire customer list. Or Vonage's rebellious mantle could be seized by a bunch of now-miniscule upstarts like Packet8 and Jajah—assuming the Baby Bells won't slap them around with patent infringement suits, too. (Since it's based abroad, Skype might be a tougher legal target. But until they can introduce number portability in the U.S., I don't think they can step it up to that next level—remember, Joe Q. Consumer still loves his phone number! It's part of his identity.)

As a low-ender, all I really care about is paying as little as possible for phone service. (I confess to once being a client of a long-distance service that made you listen to ads in exchange for free talk time.) And I'm cautiously optimistic that the broadband wars will keep pressing fees down, as phone service becomes more of an inducement than anything else. In 2002, I wrote a Wired piece about Japan's Softbank, which was then offering 12-Mbps DSL plus VoIP for around $21 per month. (They were also spending roughly $250 to acquire each new customer, but let's shove that fact aside for now.) The VoIP was the deal's most alluring bait, but I also discovered that it cost Softbank next-to-nothing—I believe it was Joi Ito who first opened up my eyes to the fact that voice really should be free.

The future cash cow for broadband providers has to be more pipe-hungry content, especially video. Voice? A drop in the bucket, a throw-in on the deal. But getting the providers to acknowledge that will require competition—between each other, of course, but also from the VoIP indies like Skype, Jajah and myriad others. I encourage our pals in Washington D.C. to make sure that competition continues, by making number portability simpler (mandating a 48-hour turnaround time?) and guarding against Big Telco shenanigans. Meanwhile, the VoIP upstarts might need to rethink their ease-of-use—Americans may be getting more comfortable with technology, but they still need their hands held from time to time. (One ad idea: rip off Geico's ingenious tagline, stating something akin to, "10 minutes could save you $200 a year. Call us to find out how." No more Vonage yodeling, please!)

The most important thing is that skinflints like me should someday enjoy haypenny-an-hour calls to mobiles in Ouagadougou. Anything short of that will be a travesty against Man and Nature.

WINNING FEELS GOOD: Two weeks ago, I appealed for y'all to help me beta test my new site. As a little carrot, I offered two copies of Best of Technology Writing 2006, edited by your humble narrator.

Happy to report that I drew for the books last night (supervised by my wife in lieu of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and we have two winners—David Hunt and Kris LeMoine, your books will be in the mail next week. For the rest of y'all, thanks and don't fret—you can read the book's contents (for free!) here.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

Read more Low End Theory

How does it work? Well, just visit jajah.com from either your PC or your smartphone's browser, log in, and enter in the person you want to call. Jajah will call you, then the recipient, and connect the two. The best part is that if the person you're calling is also a Jajah member, the call is free (barring any mobile minutes you burn up on your cellphone plan).

We spoke with Jajah yesterday gathered additional information.

Jajah says they have 70-ish phones supported right now, and any phone with a mobile browser should be able to log in and initiate calls. They've also got Java and Symbian plugins for an embedded version, so you won't have to pull up the webpage—you can start the call from the app.

The service is mostly targeted at mobile professionals and people who have family over seas. Instead of making expensive calls from their cellphones, they can have Jajah initiate the call and pay substantially less. It's not quite cheaper than using Skype or even a calling card, but unless you're always in the office or always have your calling card with you, this is an easier alternative.

As for the quality, Jajah claims that from what they've seen, most people can't tell the difference between a Jajah call and a standard call. We had noticeable delay on one of our test calls between two cellphones, but Jajah blamed that on the quality of the "last mile" provider, aka, the cellphone provider.

There are also conferencing and scheduling features, which makes getting together with multiple people cheaper and easier (if you've got their information entered in) than otherwise.

Although the price is a bit more expensive than other options, the convenience of being able to dial up people from your smartphone makes Jajah something worth looking into. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Jajah]

Mobile users sign up above first, then go to:
mobile.jajah.com