In just five years, Skype,
the free Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telecommunications
carrier, has become the world's leading carrier of international
voice telephone calls, according to
TeleGeography, a market
analyst.
Skype, which is owned by eBay, last year carried some 8% of the
world's 384 billion minutes of cross-border traffic, TeleGeography
said.
"Skype's traffic growth has been remarkable," said TeleGeography
analyst Stephan Beckert. "Only five years after its launch, Skype
has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice
communications in the world."
In its latest market update, TeleGeography said international
voice traffic continued to rise at double digit rates, 14% in 2007
and an estimated 12% in 2008.
TeleGeography estimated that Skype's cross-border traffic grew
about 41% in 2008 to 33 billion minutes.
It said declining call prices had kept revenues flat. Skype's
prices are free between Skype subscribers and cheap to fixed line
numbers.
Not all of Skype's traffic is a net loss for international
carriers, Beckert said. Skype's paid "Skype Out" service, which
lets users make calls to standard telephones, generated 8.4 billion
minutes of calls in 2008.
Skype uses wholesale carriers, such as
iBasis and
Level 3, to connect calls to
the telephone network, and peer to peer software to route calls
between Skype accounts.