Phone
Vonage jumped 24 cents to $1.44 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, after climbing as high as $1.52. The shares have more than doubled this year after falling from $17 in 2006, when Holmdel, New Jersey-based Vonage went public.
The new phone software lets Vonage customers call more than 60 countries from devices such as Apple Inc.s iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd.s BlackBerry, Vonage said in a statement. Customers who use Vonage to make international calls from home will get a 40 percent discount on their home-phone plan if they add the new mobile-phone service, the company said.
Vonage Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Haenggi couldnt be reached immediately to comment. Charles Sahner, a company spokesman, declined to comment.
The stocks jump also follows reports that another Internet-telephone company, Jajah Inc., is in talks to be sold for $200 million.
Jajah, based in Mountain View, California, may be acquired by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica SA, according to a report on the Israeli financial news site TheMarker.com, a unit of the Haaretz Group.
Jajah has about 25 million subscribers and made a deal in September to deliver voice calls over the Twitter microblogging service, company spokesman Frederik Hermann said in an interview. Yahoo Inc.s and Microsoft Corp.s Web portals also use Jajah technology for voice calling, he said.
Hermann declined to comment on TheMarkers report, which said Telefonicas O2 mobile unit will make the acquisition. The company has raised $35 million in venture capital, he said.