Skype a Factor in International Long Distance

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Skype for international calling dampens minutes of TDM carriers.

International long distance has long been the profit-rich refuge of premium calling and the target of call-back carriers because it escaped the purview of national telecom regulators. US mobile customers get free long distance while calling in the USA, but once they take their mobile phone to Canada the same call costs $0.99/minute.

Now, as reported in the VoIP News, a recent report by TeleGeography shows that SkypeOut international calling has grown to 14.6 billion minutes in 2006 while TDM minutes have grown to 298 billion minutes. TDM is slowing down to 10% while SkypeOut minutes had grown 88% that year. In the same period, Skype users consumed 28.2 billion Skype-Skype minutes.

TeleGeography has been reporting international long distance minutes since the early 1980s and reported that 2006 was the first year of slowing growth in long distance minutes. The company began recording VoIP international minutes since 2000.

Skype was acquired by eBay in the fall of 2005 and it was shortly thereafter that the company began to offer free SkypeOut within the USA throughout 2006. In 2007, Skype introduced an annual fee for unlimited SkypeOut in the USA and Canada.