Voice

Ranking the World’s Largest International Voice Carriers

Many retail service providers, such as mobile operators, MVNOs, and cable broadband providers, rely heavily on wholesale carriers to transport and terminate their customers’ international calls.

Wholesale carriers terminated approximately 257 billion minutes of traffic in 2022, down 5% from 2021. Wholesale traffic declined at an average rate of 1% per year over the past ten years, compared to a -2% CAGR for overall traffic. Wholesale carriers terminated nearly three-fourths (72%) of international traffic in 2022, up from 70% the year before.

Traffic to mobile phones in emerging markets has spurred expansion in wholesalers' share of the overall market. In 2022, wholesale carriers terminated over 87% of traffic to Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. In contrast, wholesale carriers terminated only 56% of traffic to Western Europe.

Wholesale revenues have changed only marginally from ten years ago. But let’s take a moment to look under the hood.

Where Did the Minutes Go?

The year 2014 represents the peak for international voice traffic. International call minutes declined the following year, for the first time since the Great Depression—and it's been downhill ever since.

Traffic Talk: What's the Difference Between Wholesale, Retail, and Direct?

If you’ve checked out our International Voice Report, you probably noticed that the data carefully distinguishes between retail and wholesale traffic, and between wholesale and direct traffic.

What's the difference?

When Carriers Collaborate

Wanna look at some cool voice data?

The recent expansion of the i3forum's Insights tool has quite a bit of that. I've been itching to talk about it on TeleGeography Explains the Internet. So today we're chatting with the i3forum, a nonprofit industry body focused on "accelerating transformation across the carrier ecosystem."

Put another way: this consortium of carriers routinely collaborates on solving some of the biggest challenges facing their industry. And they have a really innovative way of sharing data among participants, to the benefit of all involved. (Non-members can participate in this data-sharing, too. More of that in our discussion.)

How Did Retail International Call Revenues Fare in 2022?

Retail international long distance (ILD) call revenues have slowly withered in recent years. So, too, has ILD’s contribution to overall carrier revenues.

The Death of Voice Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Why has it taken us this long to welcome Senior Research Manager Paul Brodsky—an A+ podcast guest—to TeleGeography Explains the Internet?

I brought Paul on to discuss our most recent voice report, but we couldn’t help getting into a whole lot more. 

More Carriers, More Data: i3forum Expands Insights Offering

Today the i3forum announced the expansion of its successful Insights tool, which will now offer an Insights Light tier.

This extended offering is designed for smaller voice teams who require occasional market tracking and insight, while the flagship Insights solution remains available to large voice teams who rely on such market intelligence for day-to-day business operations.

Both levels of service are available to international carriers whether or not they are i3forum members.

Voice Traffic: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

The international voice market's trajectory is down, and there's no reason to believe it's coming back.

Our recently updated TeleGeography Report and Database shows us exactly how fast traffic volumes are plummeting.

T-Mobile Offers Cogent a Lot of Bang for Its Buck

A dollar doesn’t go very far these days. That is, unless you’re Cogent Communications, and in the market to buy Sprint’s fiber assets from T-Mobile.

This surprising story kicks off our latest list of recommended telecom reads.

Z-axis Technology Takes Location Data to New Heights

It’s our first telecom reading list of the summer, and the headlines are coming in hot.

First up—Z-axis support for 911 calls.

Scroll on down to read about this critical development for public safety, the ghost of Sprint’s 5G network, new Ukrainian voice intel, and more.