JahJah To Partner With Yahoo To Provide Voice Telephony Services

Online voice enabling technology JaJah, which offers ways to integrate phone calls and websites via widgets and other methods, will partner with Yahoo soon in what appears to be a huge deal to voice enable Yahoo websites.

From the company website we learn a bit about JaJah's corporate philosophy:

JAJAH is dedicated to bringing the world vastly improved telephony solutions at a fraction of the traditional price. We want to provide basic phone calls for free - and we truly believe it’s possible. We believe that by bringing together the best of the internet with the best of the traditional telephone industry we will be able to provide our customers with unique new solutions, solutions never before possible, at a price they’ll find irresistible.Unlike other companies that are trying to replace the phone with the computer, JAJAH believes that phones are great the way they are. Phones work. People are not interested in headsets, downloads or hotspots. They simply want to make a call. And we completely agree.

Here is an interview with JaJah's founder.

Disclosure: Long on YHOO

Skype Offers Unlimited Long Distance Calling

Skype, the popular VoIP service for making free phone calls over the internet, IM chatting, and video calls has announced that it will now be offering unlimited calling to over a third of the world’s population. The company is offering a calling subscription with a single, monthly flat rate for international calling to landline numbers in 34 countries. That's probably why my Skype was on the blitz today...it was probably jammed with people using the service.

There're apparently no long term contracts, one flat monthly fee, no hidden costs, you can make calls 24/7, and it's available for calls to 34 countries. Subscriptions can be purchased at skype.com/go/subscriptions. Skype was originally launched in August 2003 and later acquired by eBay in Oct. 2005. There are currently about 309 million users on the freely downloadable Skype software.

ATT Laying Off 4650

ATT will be laying off another 4650 people, mostly in the residential phone portion of the ATT empire. This is a large number although it represents only about 1.5% of the total ATT global workforce. In December of 2006 ATT purchased Bell South for 86 Billion and announced 10,000 layoffs at that time.

ATT appears to be hurting as customers switch away from residential lines towards mobile offerings, and Verizon's new dominance in the mobile space as a result of taking away much of the 700 MHZ spectrum in the recent auction may be yet another hurdle for ATT to overcome as the mobile and VOIP landscape forces changes on all the legacy players.

The New York Times Reports