iPhone to allow free VoIP calls

Adam Turner
Friday, 02 March 2007 21:47

IT Industry - Market

iPhone owners will be able to make free calls with the help of the internet, via Jajah Mobile Web, but it's not the same as running Skype on your phone.

Jajah will allow iPhone users to bypass their cellphone network charges to make and receive Voice over IP calls, without the need for internet access. It works by getting the Jajah service to call your mobile phone via VoIP and the call the other party via VoIP. As both parties are receiving calls, they don't have to pay anything to their network provider.

To use the service you just type mobile.jajah.com into your phone's browser, enter your user name and password and then enter your phone number and the number you want to call. Jajah has announced it will support the iPhone as soon as it becomes available in June 2007, reports My!Phone.

Jajah launched a global free call service in 2006, limited to specified geographic areas and limited by a Fair Use Policy. Calls between registered Jajah users are free for landline and mobile calls within the US, Canada, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and apply also for landline calls to and within most European countries as well as Argentina, Australia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Venezuela and Zambia.
 
Technically Jajah users aren't making VoIP calls, they're receiving them, but there's a talk of talk at the moment about real mobile VoIP using wifi/cell phones - known as dual mode handsets.

Skype is probably the most well-known VoIP service, and it runs on Windows Mobile and Pocket PC devices, but phone vendors are starting to build such features directly into new phones. Skype fighting with against telcos trying to lock them out, reports the EE Times, filling a petition with the Federal Communications Commission last week asking regulators to end the practice of carriers' controlling which devices and applications are used on their networks.

Analysts group Juniper Research predicts the worldwide market for VoIP-over-Wifi handsets will grow to almost US$70 billion by 2012, but that only 2 percent of this will be WLAN-only handsets. In other words 98 per cent of Wifi phones will be dual mode handsets.

Siemens Communications and startup DiVitas Networks have both announce products that let enterprise networks switch voice calls between cellular and Wifi networks, without dropping the call. DiVitas says its customers can use a wifi hot spot, such as a at Starbucks coffee shop, reports Computerworld. Siemens doesn't support that initially but plans to in the future by certifying VPN clients on the handsets.

Meanwhile analysts group Ovum says there is "too much hype around dual mode phones in the US". It predicts that only just over 2 per cent of mobile subscribers will have purchased dual mode services by the end of 2010 - which equates to less than five and a half million people.

"Equipment vendors have been fixated on dual mode phones as the key form of fixed-mobile convergence, but the people responsible for implementing this at the carriers are really skeptical that the devices and solutions are ever going to be ready for prime time," says Jan Dawson, the report's author and VP of Ovum's US Enterprise Practice.

"But it is actually the online portals - Yahoo!, Google, MSN and others - that are taking the lead in this area, and not the carriers, which risk being left behind. Remote access and control is nascent today but there's a big opportunity here for the carriers to invest in technology and capture this opportunity as it arises."