Skype users spent an estimated 214 billion minutes on international calls last year, according to the latest data from TeleGeography. The firm estimates that international Skype-to-Skype traffic grew 36% last year, while international telecom traffic (wireless and fixed) grew just 7%.
Growth in international Skype traffic started to outpace growth in telecom traffic in 2012, with Skype traffic that year growing by roughly 45 billion minutes (versus 40 billion for telecom). In 2013, international Skype traffic grew by about 54 billion minutes, versus roughly 36 billion for telecom.
Skype is clearly eating into service provider revenues, but the over-the-top service has a way to go before it actually catches up to telecom. Skype’s 214 billion minutes last year are less than half the 547 billion minutes spent on international phone calls.
The success of OTT competitors like Skype is motivating operators to explore their own voice-over-Internet solutions. Larger service providers have an advantage here because in most cases they are further along with LTE deployments, and therefore closer to turning on voice-over-LTE (VoLTE). VoLTE treats voice as data, meaning that operators will in theory be able to offer video calls over IP networks once they roll out VoLTE.
