Updated with Telefonica input: Telefonica will shut down its Jajah VoIP service on 31 January next year, having bought the Silicon Valley start-up for $207 million in 2009.

The news emerged in the form of a letter to Jajah account holders, telling them they’ll no longer be able to make calls through any of Jajah’s services, including the Jajah.com website and Jajah Direct.

Telefonica does not give any explanation for the closure, although the operator emphasised to Mobile World Live that the Jajah platform is still up and running to support other services, including Tu Go, its OTT app. 

It still seems reasonable to conclude, however, that making money from its branded Jajah VoIP service has proven more difficulty than expected, despite what looked like early promise.

When Telefonica purchased Jajah it said that the start-up’s services were used in around 200 countries by “millions of people” and integrated into “everyday instant messaging and social media applications”, as well as through its own Jajah direct-to-consumer offer.

Its business solutions, moreover, were used by “thousands of small-to-medium and large enterprises across the world”.

At the time, Matthew Key, the then chairman and CEO of Telefonica Europe, said the Jajah acquisition “opens up new capabilities in the voice communication space”.

Jajah has, of course, had to contend with Microsoft-owned Skype in the VoIP space, which claims a sizeable chunk of the market.

There’s also a wider range of VoIP and OTT players in the market, including Vonage and Viber (plus competition from Telefonica’s very own Tu Go app).

Telefonica makes no mention of its Jajah VoIP service in its Q3 results, though reference is made to Telefonica UK’s Tu Go service having reached 161,000 active users since launch in July.

Tu Go in the UK allows customers to make and receive calls from their existing mobile number on supported devices, including iOS, Android and PCs.