China Mobile resumes Jego services

Chinese biggest telecom operator China Mobile Ltd on Monday resumed services of Jego, a Skype-like application suspended in June.

Jego mainly targeted overseas Chinese and others wishing to communicate with friends in China. It was launched in June but was suspended in less than three weeks.

China Mobile International Ltd, a China Mobile fully owned subsidiary based in Hong Kong, is responsible for operating the Jego service. It said Jego's temporary pause was due to an optimization for the app.

Jego allows people who registered for the service to make free or low-cost calls to mobile phones and landlines. The app can be used on mobile devices running Apple Inc's iOS operating system or Google Inc's Android platform.

In addition, Jego provides free in-app text messaging along with other standard features, such as push-to-talk voice messages, photo sharing, video calling, and a multimedia-sharing function.

Because of the prices of long-distance calls, an increasing number of customers have switched to voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP services, industry analysts said.

That creates a huge market for services such as Microsoft's Skype, as well as for Jego, they said.