__NOTOC__ Jaxtr was a social communications company that melds together global calling, SMS, and social networking. Founded by Phillip Mobin and Touraj Parang in October 2005, Jaxtr uses

Voice over Internet Protocol Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables Voice call, voice calls to be tran ...

to offer competitive rates as well as free international and long distance calling. Some key differentiators for Jaxtr in its market include allowing phone-to-phone calls to and from any mobile and landline phones, offering social networking focused on voice (café jaxtr), requiring no software downloads or access pins, and giving users local

Direct Inward Dialing Direct inward dialing (DID), also called direct dial-in (DDI) in Europe and Oceania, is a telecommunication service offered by telephone companies to subscribers who operate private branch exchange (PBX) systems. The feature provides service for m ...

(DID) phone numbers. Offered in 56 countries, these numbers allow users in those countries to dial a local phone number which would ring a long distance or international destination phone. Jaxtr also offers users a set number of global

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

messages each month. Jaxtr reported having over 10 million users in 220 countries in 2008. In June 2008, they raised $10 million in a Series B round of venture capital funding from

Lehman Brothers Lehman Brothers Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1850. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merril ...

Venture Partners. In the same month, they also launched their paid services. In October 2008, Jaxtr laid off thirty percent of its employees, and its CEO, Konstantin Guericke, was fired. The company was located in Menlo Park, CA. On 14 June 2009, Hotmail founder

Sabeer Bhatia Sabeer Bhatia (born 30 December 1968) is an Indian American businessman who co-founded the first free web-based email service, Hotmail.com (now Outlook.com) in 1996. In 2021 he co-founded ShowReel with Javed Yunus. ShowReel initially hosted sho ...

's company, Sabsebolo acquired Jaxtr for an unknown amount, which effectively meant closing down the service as stated by co-founder Touraj Parang.

Technology

While

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

popularized the concept to make calls through personal computers for consumers, Jaxtr built on that concept by allowing calls to be routed through VoIP to and from both mobile and landline phones. As a hybrid of

telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunications services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is ...

and Web technologies, Jaxtr is built with

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

components and

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

database servers, which run a protocol-independent calls engine that combines users' voice and text conversations. Jaxtr uses open source software throughout the system--

memcached Memcached (pronounced variously /mɛmkæʃˈdiː/ ''mem-cash-dee'' or /ˈmɛmkæʃt/ ''mem-cashed'') is a general-purpose distributed memory-caching system. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and object ...

, Asterisk, and OpenSER SIP server among others. Jaxtr provided local phone numbers in numerous countries around the world by contracting with wholesale

(DID) service providers such as DIDX. Providing users with these DIDs allows them to dial a local number, which is routed through jaxtr’s VoIP system, and connects with the person they are calling internationally. As a result, the caller pays their service provider only the standard charge for local calling, instead of international toll.

Products

JaxtrSMS

JaxtrSMS was a cross-platform, open texting application. This mobile application let users send unlimited free text messages to any other phone anywhere in the world. Also, JaxtrSMS retained the number of the user and no new number was required like regular SMS. Although initially promoted as a free product, Jaxtr later asked some users to pay for delivery of SMS messages to countries other than India and the USA.Cloud SIM App
/ref>

References

External links

*{{Official website, name=Official website (archived) Companies based in Menlo Park, California Telecommunications companies of the United States VoIP companies

Technology

Products

JaxtrSMS

See also

References

External links