Comparison of “free” web callback services from Jajah, Nonoh and Raketu
Betamax launched Nonoh targeted against Jajah several months ago. And Raketu also started to provide “free” phone 2 phone VoIP service, which can be considered as a direct competitor of Jajah and Nonoh. Although there are still quite some “free” VoIP services as well as phone to phone VoIP providers, it is hard to find more VoIP produtes that offer remarkable “free” minutes like and also support phone 2 phone web callback feature like Jajah, Nonoh and Raketu.
Jajah
Jajah can be consider an “old” company is the fast changing VoIP market and the lead of the web callback VoIP service. The web callback method itself is a smart trick to bypass the bottle neck of requirement for band width and the handset hardware, but without the “free” minutes offer, Jajah could attract so many users and so much attention.
How Jajah works has been well known: Every user can register 3 phone number and can only make calls from these 3 numbers. Moreoever, registereds number normally cannot be registered under other account without contacting Jajah support. Changing registered numbers is also difficult. Users use Jajah service recently (it seemed to be 2 weeks in the past) are called active users. If both parties of a call are active users with some credit (Jajah offer a little amount free credit to new users as trial) on their account and both of them are in free zone (Free zones of Jajah, Nonoh and Raketu are more or less the same, which include fixed lines in West Europe, fixed lines plus mobile phones in North America, China and so on), the call will be free. The free minutes in West EU and North America is 150 per month and 500 per week. But in China (as long as there has been a Chinese number registered under the account) it is 15 per week and 50 per month.
If somebody want to use Jajah on a mobile phone, except making calls via web callback, a small Java application can be installed to make calls. As the normal Jajah web page to make calls uses Java script, it cannot be display correctly on most mobile browsers of. Thus, Jajah provides the WAP version mobile.jajah.com to make calls. But according to my experience, calls made from mobile.jajah.com always is not free. I guess it will be the same for calls made from the Java dialing application. It seems that Jajah will redirect all mobile browsers (such as Opera Mobile and Opera Mini) to the WAP page. When free minutes are used up, the rate to China is 3.1 euro cents per minute.
Jajah also can be used to send SMS, the rate to China is 5 euro cents per 160 letters. It could not support unicode in the past, I have no idea whether it is improved now. According to my personal view, the sound quality of Jajah is quite good, sometime you have to try more than once before the call is connected.
Nonoh
Betamax is also a famous name on the VoIP market. Though Betamax doesn’t have its name on media as frequently as Jajah, but it is well known by customers for its more than 20 different daughter companies and the number is still increasing. Most Betamax products support web callback feature, but only Nonoh is dedicated for phone 2 phone method and doesn’t need connection fee.
Nonoh doesn’t have any limitation for phone numbers of call parties, which is a big advantage over Jajah. When users put 10 euro credit on their account, they can enjoy 60 per call, 300 per week and 1000 per month free minutes in following 120 days. After 120 days, normal rate will be applied.
Nonoh have neither a Java dialing client on mobile phones nor a WAP version page, thus it will be difficult to make calls from many handsets. I am using Opera Mini to make calls from the WWW page. As Opera Mini works with proxy (cache server), there can be potential security issue for user name and passpword.
Nonoh also can be used to send SMS and it free for many destinations. My experience is that the sound quality of Nonoh is as good as Jajah and so are other aspects.
Raketu
Raketu is a relatively new company and it seems to have Czech background according to its name (I heard that Raketu means Rocket in Czech).
The “free” policy of Raketu is that customers can enjoy 1200 free minutes per months in 90 days after recharging with at least 10 USD. But please notice that, the 1200 minutes is calculated based on PC 2 phone method. So it is only 600 minutes for phone 2 phone method. After free minutes being used up, the phone 2 phone rate between Chinese number is 0.0328 USD per minute.
Raketu also doesn’t have limitation for phone numbers of call parties. It doesn’t have a Java dialing client on mobile phones, but there is a WAP version of dialing page of Raketu.
The rate of Raketu to send SMS to China is 0.088 USD. The voice quality of Raketu seems to be worse than Jajah and Nonoh. It is also more difficult to get connected with Raketu comparing with Jajah and Nonoh.
Summary
| Jajah | Nonoh | Raketu | |
| Limitation of phone numbers | Yes | No | No |
| Free minutes | 500/month | 1000/month | 600/month |
| Dialing method | J2ME+WAP | WWW | WAP |
| Sound quality | Good | Good | Nomal |
| SMS | Normal | Free | Expensive |
For free minutes, Nonoh is the best, Raketu is the second，Jajah is the last。But Nonoh and Raketu require customers buy 10 Euro/USD credit to get free minutes in following 120 or 90 days. And Jajah only requires calling parties are active users to have free minutes every month and there is no or less requirement for purchasing credit in advance. So for customers with fixed call destinations, Jajah is the cheapest choice.
Personallly I feel Nonoh is the most flexible one and 10 euro (11.9 euro with VAT) to have 4000 minutes in total is a good deal. The only problem is the bad reputation of Betamax’s service, so enjoy it when it is as now 
For dialing, Jajah is the most convenient one, Raketu is the second and Nonoh is the last. But it is not free to make calls from mobile phones with Jajah, then Raketu is the best from this point of view. Jajah and Nonoh have more or less the same level of sound quality, and Raketu is not so good. Obvious, Nonoh is the best to send SMS.
Translated from Jajah、Nonoh和Raketu网页回叫VoIP电话比较
[...] Jajah announced that users of Jajah Direct can enjoy 60 minutes free VoIP call during Xmas. But Jajah Direct only has access numbers in US, Italy, Germany, UK, Austria and Israel, which means users in other countries cannot benefit from this offer. [...]