SKYPE HAS BECOME the largest long-distance phone company according to new data from a market research outfit.
TeleGeography's stats show international voice traffic is on the up and up with cross-border telephone traffic growing some 14 per cent in 2007 and a further 12 per cent in 2008. Since those stats are really a bit meaningless, let us put it another way: 384 billion minutes of cross territory talk time.
You might think 384 billion minutes of foreign calls would be lucrative for the telcos, but you would be wrong. And that's why telcos hate Skype. The Voip company has forced call prices down so low that revenues for international calling have had their pants pulled down round their ankles.
Skype's international traffic has skyrocketed, with TeleGeography estimating that the firm's cross-border traffic grew approximately 41 per cent in 2008, to some 33 billion minutes – that's about eight per cent of all combined international telephone and Skype traffic.
Analyst Stephan Beckert noted Skype's traffic growth had been remarkable, adding "Only five years after its launch, Skype has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world."
But whereas Skype does offer free IP calls (cross border or not), the firm does charge for its Skype-Out service, although admittedly much less than most telcos. The firm's paid service apparently billed for 8.4 billion minutes in 2008.
It seems that talk is cheap nowadays. Literally.