Signal to Noise

You want to know why haven’t had much to say about Jajah and Rebtel? Because I’ve been thinking pretty much the same thing Phoneboy has about these two services, which purport to allow cell phone users to circumvent minutely charges by routing calls through (in the case of Jajah) another independent carrier, as long as the call recipient is also a member of that independent carrier, and as long as there is adequate data service on the phone, and as long as the phone is one of about a half-dozen the carrier supports.

Oof. With the cost of minutely telephony, and especially long-distance call switching, rapidly declining toward zero, one wonders if the same thing will happen with cell minutes. I hope so!  But doesn’t that put a dent in these guy’s business plan? Time will tell.

And keep in mind, this isn’t Jajah’s first stab at identifying a business model around telephony. Remember when Jajah used to be a soft-phone call-switching service like Gizmo Project, as recently as July of 2005? I mean, I can’t fault the guys for trying to “get it right” even if it means scrapping their original plan. But, like Dameon says, the case for Jajah is really razor thin, and their proprietors are making a mighty bet that cell minute rates will remain high (I actually see them dropping as competing offerings enter the market via campus-area solutions and fixed mobile becomes more popular), and that cell-phone data services will become so cost effective that the masses will flock to them (another bet which I think is poor, considering EVDO still costs 80 bucks a month while WiFi is available just about everywhere for free).