Jajah exec says firm close to signing 1m subscribers

Jajah, a European start-up that slashes the cost of long-distance mobile telephone calls, is set to sign up 1 million customers this year, one of the company's co-founders, quoted by a Reuters report said.


'We are confident that we will have better than 1 million paying customers by the end of year,' Jajah co-founder Daniel Mattes said in an interview with Reuters. 'It is already close to a million,' he said of the number of customers.


Jajah allows consumers to place international or long-distance telephone calls, for free, or at a fraction of conventional prices, on existing mobile or landline phones, using the Internet to bypass carrier toll charges, the Reuters report said.


Founded in 2005 by Mattes and his partner, Roland Scharf, two Austrian software entrepreneurs, Jajah is one of a new class of companies using the Internet to deliver innovative phone services aimed at the world's 2.5 billion mobile users, the report said.


By quantifying its results for the first time since it began offering services in February, Jajah is looking to demonstrate the in-roads the closely held company is making as a new communications alternative, the report said.


Jajah customers are split equally between

North America, Asia and Europe, he said. China, Singapore and Hong Kong are its most active markets in Asia. Germany, Italy, Britain, Switzerland and Austria
are its top European markets.