This morning’s Squawk Box was ably hosted by Dan York. Sitting in for me (I was on an airplane), he took on the twin topics of the carriers rumored attempts to create a Skype competitor, and the launch of Clearwire as the US Cable companies, Google and Intel step to the plate to try to save WiMAX.
On the call: Dan York, Jim Courtney, Ken Camp, James Body, Mark Hewitt, Dave Brown, Todd Spraggins, Jeanette Fisher, Ragui Kamel, Ian Hood, Bill Volk, and Mike Pruyn.
Thank you, Dan, for hosting it. From the listen I’ve had while editing it sounds as if it was a great session.
When Jajah’s dropped me a note last night to say that Michael Cerda and Ben Dean of Jangl were joining the Jajah team, I knew something was up. The founder CEO of a company doesn’t just quit — either the company is going under or there’s been a massive capital raise and the new investors decide they want their guy running the show. I was at dinner with an investor, but this morning it turns out to have been the former.
If there’s one thing that Cerda has been good at, it’s doing deals. In his new role at Jajah, as VP of Sales and Business development, he’ll have plenty of opportunity to do just that.
Some have speculated that this portends the collapse of a number of VoIP startups. Perhaps, but perhaps some of those startups had business models that weren’t tenable to begin with. The voice world is different from the web world in that free telephony has a real margin cost, and consumers have little tolerance for another bill for the telephone.
