Jaxtr announces that its membership has grown 10-fold since July from 500,000 to 5 million. This makes jaxtr the fastest growing Internet communications service in history - ahead of Skype, Hotmail and ICQ. Jaxtr users can make and receive phone calls in 220 countries, and they enjoy not just bypassing international calling fees, but also having greater control over incoming calls while using their regular landline or mobile phone. Jaxtr's record word-of-mouth growth is due to the fact that jaxtr is the first service to offer benefits not just to the caller or the callee, but to both parties. Jaxtr has never done any advertising or any kind of distribution deals to promote its service.

Jaxtr is poised to benefit from the coming VoIP shakeout. "The new wave of VoIP services allow users to enjoy the benefits and simplicity of placing phone calls through their existing phones - by selecting a name from the contact list and hitting the green 'send' button," said Rebecca Swensen, research analyst, VoIP Services for IDC. "Jaxtr has demonstrated that ease-of-use is a critical factor to bringing VoIP into the mainstream. Mobile VoIP calls no longer require a PC or an Internet connection."

How jaxtr works:
Users sign up for jaxtr and receive a link that allows friends to call them using their regular mobile or landline phone. Their friends simply click on the jaxtr link and enter their number. Then, their friend's phone rings, the jaxtr member's phone rings and jaxtr connects the call. Callers can then save the local number provided by jaxtr and use it whenever they want to call their friends and family overseas without being tethered to their computer.

Unlike other mobile VoIP solutions, there is no need to download an application to the phone and no requirement to have a phone that provides Wi-Fi access or includes an Internet plan. Callers simply use the minutes included in their domestic calling plan to make international calls from their mobile phone.

Additionally, jaxtr members have the option to link all of their phones to their account, and can then choose which of their phones rings when receiving a call. Members can also select which callers get routed to a digital voicemail provided by jaxtr and who gets put through directly to their phone.

The overwhelming consumer response to jaxtr's offering has presented jaxtr with unprecedented challenges of scaling up systems. Addressing these demands, today the company announced the addition of Taneli Otala as VP of engineering. Otala was previously VP of technology at Various and CTO at MySQL.