A few years ago there were countless VoIP start-ups, each had their own way to provide free or cheap calls. Some offered anonymous calling, other would intergrades with your existing land lines. Most jumped on the social networking bandwagon, many of them - Jangl, TalkPlus and EQO went bust. They learned the harsh lesson that selling cheap minutes or offering free calls isn't really a business. One such company in Menlo Park, Calif. based Jaxtr (http://www.jaxtr.com) apparently hasn't learnt that lesson.

It is still hanging around; thanks to $10 million venture capital infusion it received in June 2008 from Lehman Venture Partners (http://www.jaxtr.com/press/june_24_2008.jsp) Earlier they sent out a press release (http://www.jaxtr.com/user/press/december_17_2008.jsp) touting Freeconnect, their free member-to-member calling service, that has been tried unsuccessfully by other VoIP start-ups. The whole process of using Jaxtr to make free phone calls seems so cumbersome and in this day of increasingly cheap wireless plans - almost pointless. Also the wide spread acceptance of Skype (www.skype.com) makes for some difficult competition, maybe they can help add some competition to the market, but I think they will fail.