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Voxbone (News - Alert) has entered a partnership with Jajah to offer a value-added telecommunications service that offers affordable international calls. The International Favorites service, Jajah’s service for mobile customers of O2 (News - Alert) in the UK, provides the subscriber a virtual international number so that family and friends abroad can make calls to that number at local rates.

Under this service, Voxbone will provide the O2 customers with a virtual an international “Call Me” number from a country of choice This number can be mapped or linked to the customer’s original UK mobile number. The callers to the “Call Me” number will dial the number as usual as any other phone number and the calls will be transmitted to the O2 user's mobile phone via the IP network of Voxbone. The user will not need any specific model of phone or any application to use the “Call Me” number. The calls to this virtual number will be billed like local PSTN calls.

In a release, Rod Ullens, CEO of Voxbone, said that, “We are enthused about this opportunity to help a global telecom leader use our phone numbers and global VoIP backbone to create value for its customers and its business. International Favorites enables customers to keep in closer touch with friends and loved ones in other countries, while it benefits operators by promoting customer loyalty and international calling.”

Voxbone is also offering numbers for the additional feature of “International Favorites”. This feature offers three local outbound numbers for each subscriber that can be used to reach selected international mobile as well landline numbers. Calls to these numbers will be charged at a flat rate of around $15 per month for 3,000 minutes (50 hours).

Trevor Healy, chief innovation officer for Telefonica (News - Alert) Europe, said that “A new kind of geography is being formed that is about local presence and global relationships superseding distance or national borders. International Favorites gives us a tremendous opportunity to innovate, reflect our users' needs and open new revenue streams.”

In other news, Voxbone recently launched a new one-stop support of short messaging service (SMS) for its direct inward dial (DID) numbers.

This new support service, according to the company, is aimed at enabling end users with phone numbers in foreign markets to receive text messages, as well as voice calls, at local rates. It also takes further advantage of Internet protocol networks’ capacity to converge voice and data. Also, it replaces a multi-step, multi-contract process for Voxbone’s carrier and enterprise customers.