Cool Stuff: JAJAH touts 'first' Facebook VoIP app

(From GSMA)

Telefonica Europe’s VoIP unit, JAJAH, claims to have become the first VoIP app to be embedded into Facebook, the social networking giant. The operator announced this week that ‘JAJAH Social Call’ has launched in beta mode, initially as a mobile app for BlackBerry devices. The service allows users to directly call any online Facebook friend at local call rates. “JAJAH Social Call is the first global telephony service to work within Facebook,” said JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy. “We have seen numerous announcements from many companies, but JAJAH is the first to bring a genuine calling service to Facebook.” The deal is another significant scoop for JAJAH in the social network space after earlier striking a similar agreement with Twitter. Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide. The move follows news earlier this month that VoIP giant Skype has launched a PC-based service that is integrated with Facebook’s social network. Dubbed ‘Skype 5.0 for Windows’, the VoIP firm noted that “the Facebook Phonebook in Skype allows users to call and SMS their Facebook friends directly on their mobile phones and landlines with just a few clicks. If your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact, you can make a free Skype-to-Skype call.”

Telefonica Europe – which runs the O2-branded operations in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – acquired mobile VoIP start-up JAJAH for US$207 million at the beginning of the year. It announced in July it was to begin using the technology at its German subsidiary (O2 Germany) with a product called ‘O2 Global Friends.’ Yesterday, the Financial Timesreported that O2 UK will this week launch “a low-cost international calls service for its customers” and the Spanish operator group plans to introduce similar arrangements at five of its Latin American businesses next year.