Deutsche Telekom invests in Jajah, the VoIP company

Jajah continues to be the VoIP company with chutzpah.

It has just scored a major backer: Deutsche Telekom, which on a revenue basis may be the largest telecommunications company in the world. It’s a big ally for Jajah, the small Mountain View upstart that is barely a year old, but which wants to make a run on Skype and other Internet telephone providers.

Deutsche Telekom, Germany’s largest carrier, has joined the $20 million investment in Jajah that was led by Intel and announced earlier this month. At the time, Deutsche Telekom wasn’t ready to join the announcement. The exact amount of Deutsche Telekom’s investment is unknown.

The endorsement is significant because no other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company has partnered with such a large company. Vonage allied with AT&T to sell its a service to new DSL subscribers, but that effort largely seeks to replace landlines. Jajah’s strategy is not to replace a landline, but to add to it. The idea is that Deutsche Telekom would retain the customer, who would continue to make locals calls, but use Jajah for long-distance, said Tevor Healy in an interview with VentureBeat. While the two companies will remain separate for now, the partnership is in a testing phase. However, Jajah will have access to Deutsche Telekom’s large and modern telecom backbone to route its calls — giving it cost and quality improvements.

Deutsche has not did not have a VoIP offering. The giant has about $80 billion in revenue in mobile, broadband and fixed line offerings, and operates in more than 50 countries — and known in the U.S. as T-Mobile.

In the U.S., most carriers have tried to build their own VoIP services, determined to own their offerings outright. In Europe, however, carriers have been readier to consider partnership. Jajah may be one way for Deutsche to add things like IM and video calls down the line, said William A. Stofega, research analyst at IDC.

Jajah says it has more than two million users from 55 countries.

We use Jajah all the time.