Skype is world's largest international voice carrier

Who could had imagined 10 years ago that the largest international long distance company is a company that resides online. According to Telegeography, Skype became the largest long-distance phone company in 2008, delivering 8% of all international traffic. In total, 417 billion minutes worth of long distance calls were made in 2008, up 12% from 2007, two points lower than in 2007, where minutes grew 14%.

By contrast, international Skype traffic grew 41% last year to 33 billion minutes. Around a quarter ie, 8.4 billion of these minutes were from Skype's paid-for SkypeOut service generating revenue for wholesale international carriers.

Its a amazing result for a company that has only been around for slightly over 6 years at the expense of the traditional international long distance losing lots of revenue and many will go out of business in the nearest future. 

Against the growth in traffic, international long distance revenues have been mainly flat due to declining call prices. The average price for an international call has fallen by over 80% in the last 15 years, and declined 7% in 2007. International long distance traffic grew from 71.7 billion minutes in 1997 to 343 billion minutes in 2007.