A new take on Internet Telephony

Internet telephony just got a little more interesting with the introduction of Jajah.com. Jajah gives you a web form and asks you to enter two telephone numbers: yours and someone else's. Jajah's service initiates the connection by dialing both phones simultaneously. Pick up the phone, the remote party picks up their phone, and now you're connected via a pure IP service.

True, the pranking possibilities are limitless. Here's a helpful hint: don't connect your Mom's mobile phone with Weight Watchers or your buddy's phone with Alcoholics Anonymous.

You get five minutes to try the service for free. After that, it's a pure pay-as-you-go model, with costs that are spectacularly low. Calling a landline in Germany? Expect a tad less than 2 cents per minute. How about China? Just a fraction over 2 cents per minute.

Message for the telcos: this is precisely the kind of service I'm talking about in when I advocate adding value  at layers 4 through 7. How about investing in services like this, that could actually create value, rather than continue to erect useless tollbooths on the Internet? Oh, that's right, you folks think it's 1959 and you're still a full-fledged, government-sponsored monopoly. Forget it.

Give Jajah.com a try.