Alec Saunders SquawkBox

What do Google and MySpace have in common?  They’re both exemplars of the new media.  Having built hot online properties, they’re now turning to cross-over opportunities on television, radio and in print, in order to expand their advertising businesses. 

The market thinks they’re hot too, awarding them a much higher multiple than traditional media outlets.

Some of those established media companies are looking to fight back.  Tomorrow, two German companies (Pro7Sat1, Germany’s most popular TV station, and Bild-T Online, the most widely read newspaper in Europe), plus News Austria, the leading media company in Austria, will announce relationships with JAJAH.  Starting tomorrow, everyone living in Germany, or Austria, will be able to make free phone calls anywhere in their respective countries.  It’s the elimination of national calling charges for Germans and Austrians, and possibly the transformation of these companies into the new media properties they aspire to be.

Supported by a $5 million promotional campaign, the companies will include branded versions of the Jajah web application on their home pages, accompanied by advertising.  The deal expands JAJAH’s audience, supporting it with a well funded promotional campaign, and creates new web based advertising outlets for the three incumbent media players.  The holy grail, of course, would be contextually targeted advertising attached to a voice call.  They haven’t achieved that, yet, but it’s undoubtedly in the future.

For JAJAH, it’s also a shift in business model.  The “powered by JAJAH” sites they’ve partnered to build will provide them with a revenue split on the advertising dollars generated.   This is a free calling promotion, with a difference.  It has a plausible revenue model.

Ad funded voice was bound to happen sooner or later;  JAJAH has gotten there first.   Their progress will certainly be watched closely by other VoIP companies, like Italy’s Abbeynet, who already have partnerships with media players.

Now, if they can just close that rumored deal with Apple…

Other links: Business 2.0’s Eric Shonfeld has posted an extensive interview with JAJAH Co-Founder Roman Scharf.  Pat Phelan asks how can they make money when their model is take people off the PC for calls, but present ads on the pC. 

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Free Telephony for Europe’s Largest Markets

JAJAH Partners with Media Companies to Provide Telephony Services and Infrastructure

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 18, 2006 — JAJAH unveiled this morning a new model for free telephony. By partnering with three of the largest European media companies — Pro7Sat1 GMBH, Bild-T Online GMBH, and News Austria — 110 million consumers will now be able to make free phone calls.

Pro7Sat1, Germany’s most popular TV station, will offer its customers free calls, conduct a primetime TV advertising campaign with JAJAH, and make free telephony an offer on its home page. Bild-T Online, Europe’s most widely-read newspaper, will bring a free telephony offer to its readership and market it in a similar manner. Finally, News Austria, the leading Austrian media company, will conduct a campaign in its local markets.

This news represents a business-model expansion for JAJAH and media companies. Founded as the people’s phone company, JAJAH seeks innovative ways to bring low cost or free calls to consumers globally. “We are really exited at the prospect of extending free calls in Europe’s largest market”, said JAJAH co-founder Daniel Mattes.

Starting today, anyone living in Germany or Austria will simply go to the easy to use web based application and dial anyone in their country for free. The offer arose from feedback from the JAJAH community in these countries.

The project represents the cooperation of telecommunications companies, media companies and an innovator. “We are seeing an interesting convergence here,” said Mr. Mattes. “The most innovative off-line media companies are moving towards the web. By working with JAJAH, our partners are able to deliver advanced 2.0 solutions to their existing customers. JAJAH gives them a path to the future by supplying all the telephony infrastructure they need”.

About JAJAH

JAJAH is an innovative and simple way to make cheap calls using the Internet - without headphones, microphones or software downloads. JAJAH connects users phone-to-phone, landline or mobile, local or anywhere else in the world. An Internet connection is only necessary to initiate or schedule the call.

JAJAH was introduced in the US in March 2006 and has since been awarded Top 100 innovating company by the reputed Red Herring Magazine.

It is the latest brainchild of founders Daniel Mattes and Roman Scharf. Simple and cost-effective: JAJAH opens up the benefits of VoIP to all Internet users—regardless of whether they have broadband or dial-up.

JAJAH is based in Mountain View, California with a European office in Luxembourg. Its board of directors includes Instant Messaging pioneer Yair Goldfinger, Haim Sadger of Sequoia Capital and Venky Ganesan of Globespan Capital.

The Jajah team certainly seems to be on a roll.  Co-founder Daniel Mattes has been recently quoted saying that they’re in “intense negotiations” with Apple over the use of the Jajah VoIP suite on the upcoming iPhone.  If true, that would be a major coup, driving Jajah into brand new territory. 

According to folks in the know, that’s not the only big deal they’re working on either. 

I’m pretty impressed with Truphone, and with it’s American competitor, GizmoVoip.  Both rely on the new SIP subsystem that comes in the Nokia N80i, and both provide a very high quality, and very functional WiFi VoIP capability on this dual mode handset.

And in particular, I’m happiest with the combination of these and iotum.  Truphone can hand a call off to your cellular handset when you’re out of range of WiFi.  iotum can filter all incoming calls, and make decisions about the best handset to send them to, based on who’s calling and where you are.  I’ve now entered my Truphone 360 number into iotum as my mobile number.  What this means is that when I am at home, or in the office, and calls are sent to my iotum number (613-482-9088), it’s likely I can take them on a zero cost handset — either my WiFi mobile handset, or my landline.  And when I leave the office, they will automatically fail over to my cellular account.

I get a huge number of cellular calls every month when I am sitting right beside a land line.  This might allow me to significantly reduce my monthly cellular minutes bill.  Way cool!

I just upgraded my Rogers Unlimited*** plan to the “Rogers More Than Unlimited***, But Still Not Quite UNlimited” plan.  The plans aren’t actually called Unlimited*** anymore, either. They’ve now renamed Unlimited*** to Max (it’s still limited to 25Mb, though), and introduced something called Data 100, which is limited to 200Mb and costs $100/month.  Somebody must have talked some sense into those lawyers. 

In general, data plans at Canadian carriers are byzantine.  This is what Rogers’ data plans look like, for instance:

Lite, Plus and Max… sounds more like a feminine hygiene product, or a package of cigarettes than a wireless data plan, doesn’t it? Do you suppose they have a Menthol too?  In any case, it’s clear from the overage fees, that they are actively discouraging people from buying the small plans.  In fact, for a couple of our test Blackberries, we mistakenly bought the small plans, and were hit with hundreds of dollars in overage in the first month. 

Telus’ plans are only marginally better.  They’ve dumped the small plans altogether, and have a $40, $60 and $100 plan, each of which offer a slightly better monthly maximum than Rogers.  So, for instance, the Telus $100 plan includes 250M of data, rather than 200.  Bell Mobility’s plan is identical to Telus.

In contrast, south of the border Cingular offers a true unlimited plan for $59.99/month if you plan to use it with a laptop, or $49.99 for a Blackberry or PDA.  Verizon has an unlimited plan for $59.99 too.

Where they really get you, though, is on the roaming.  Rogers’ roaming rates are $.05/kb, for most of the US.  That’s $51/Mb!  Telus’ roaming rates seem a little more reasonable at $.01/k (in addition to your regular rate in Canada), until you read the fine print where they tell you that roaming on a PCS network will cost you $0.95/minute for data. 

As crazy as it seems, Canadians who travel regularly to the US are likely better to get a US unlimited data plan and a PC card for travelling than to roam their Canadian plans, especially if you have two or three users, and can share the card. 

What a country, eh?