Yahoo! is outsourcing the Yahoo! Messenger “phone out” and “phone in” functions to Jajah, which claims 10 million users of its Web-activated calling service. Jajah essentially provides a way to make low-cost international calls from within a Web browser by specifying a “call from this device” number and “call this number.” This links the caller with the called party in the same way some conference calls are set up.

 

Yahoo!’s (News - Alert) move is parallel to what many other voice providers are doing these days: outsourcing the function to third parties with enough scale to provide voice functions more affordably. Even Tier One service providers are looking at the costs of operating their own long distance networks compared to outsourcing the voice functions to third parties.

 

Jajah says it hopes to attract more wholesale customers with a package of managed services for voice calls, and is talking to phone and cable companies about the idea.

 

Traditionally, outsourcing has made most sense for small, independent service providers — either cable or telco — without the internal staff to create and manage the new services. But these days, with profit margins on basic calls being so low, lots of volume is required. And there won't be many service providers able to scale enough to make the numbers work.

 

Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert) AG, the parent of cell carrier T-Mobile USA, is a Jajah investor.