Mobile VoIP

A new option for international calling in Europe has rolled out.

Telefonica (News - Alert) has announced a mobile VoIP international call service in based on Jajah, the VoIP start-up it acquired six months ago.

The service will begin at Telefonica's German subsidiary (O2 (News - Alert) Germany) with a product called 'O2 Global Friends,' which will give customers in Germany the ability to make international calls by dialing a local number.

O2 customers can choose five friends who are abroad and O2 Global Friends will assign a local number for each of them, which they can call anytime. Further Jahah-powered services will be launched across the Telefonica Europe businesses in the coming months, and will be supported by a major mainstream marketing and advertising campaign, claimed to be the first of its kind for an IP calling solution anywhere in the world. The operator has 54 million mobile customers in Europe in total.

'The power of an innovative Silicon Valley start-up joining forces with a major telecommunications company highlights the benefits of combining innovation with scale," said Jajah CEO Trevor Healy (News - Alert). "Telefónica's global reach, huge customer base and marketing muscle will bring once-niche services to millions of mainstream customers, taking Jajah-powered services to a whole new level."

Meanwhile, Gartner (News - Alert) analyst Charlotte Patrick noted that: 'the introduction of an IP-based calling service by a mainstream carrier shows the maturity of this market and we can expect other telcos to follow with similar services.'

Telefonica's tie up with Jajah is further evidence that major operators that had previously seen mobile VoIP as a threat to their voice revenues are beginning to embrace the technology. A similar deal was struck in February between US operator Verizon Wireless and Skype.