• April 30, 2008

Voice over Internet Provider Jajah will power the Internet voice functions for Yahoo Messenger, the Web portal's instant messaging program.

Jajah will connect calls to and from Yahoo Messenger as well as handling things like billing, payment processing and customer service. The deal is a big win for Jajah, which has raised $28 million in funding to date from investors including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Ventures, Deutsche Telekom and Intel.

Founded in 2005 in Austria and now based in Mountain View, Calif., the startup says it has 10 million customers. Yahoo Messenger has 97 million customers, but how many use the service's premium phone features has not been disclosed. While calls between PCs are free, Yahoo charges 1 cent per minute for calls to phones domestically, and higher rates for calls abroad.

Jajah's primary service lets users make cheap international calls by entering their own number and the recipient's number on its Web site. Jajah then connects the call via its Internet-based technology.

--Mark Walsh