Free international and local calling with Jajah - on your normal phone

Voice over IP calls or Internet Telephony means cheap calls, but how about free local and international ones? That's what Jajah promises, and better yet, you make the calls with your normal phone and not your computer.

Well, that's not quite true: you place the calls on Jajah's website, so a computer is needed. Jajah then sets up the call rings the phones of you and the person you're calling. I tried it and it works fine with both landlines and mobiles to NZ and Australia. The sound quality is very good, and there's no discernible lag.

There's a free registration required if you want the free calling. After that, you can make free calls to landlines and mobiles in the US, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Free calls are available to landlines in Australia, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain "and most other European nations".

Typically enough, Kiwis have to pay even for Jajah. Calls to landlines cost 2.5 US¢ per minute for most countries, and mobiles between 19¢ to 34¢ per minute, with the full rate table here. I can't get over how we always get shafted on telecommunications in this country.

Jajah's clearly had a think about how to leverage cheap VoIP calls so as to stand out in an increasingly crowded market which is dominated by Skype anyway. As Tom Keating's VoIP and Gadget Blog says, the free and cheap calls are just bait to get people onto the paid services.

Either way, Jajah could be useful - maybe it can come in handy when travelling, so as to avoid roaming charges by using local numbers?

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