Until 2015, international carrier voice traffic had increased in each of the previous 60 years.
But for the past four years, paid call volumes have slumped with no end in sight. International carriers had already suffered from revenue stagnation due to slow traffic growth and falling prices. The unprecedented occasion of outright traffic decline, however, marked a new and depressing turning point.
The international voice market doesn't bring a lot of joy these days. (For that, may I suggest adopting a puppy?)
As we've written before, 2015 marked a turning point in the international voice market. It was the first time since the Great Depression that international call traffic declined, even if only by one half percent.
And it's been downhill ever since, as the slump in voice traffic has turned into a fact of life. Carriers’ traffic fell a further 9% in 2017 and then another 4% in 2018, to a total of 465 billion minutes.
Our pricing team fields all kinds of questions from our users about the pricing data you'll find in our databases. We were recently asked why internet service providers need to pay for local access.
We've written our fair share about India's telecom landscape. And we're not the only ones keeping our eye on the cheapest mobile prices in the world.
The Washington Post recently explored the Indian telecom landscape. Their story details an industry at a crossroads, with major companies struggling to compete.
We've added it to our list of recommended posts, as well as a deep dive into how apps are tracking us, Slate's exploration of the internet "kill switch," and a profile on the UK's first all-fiber city.
We've been celebrating the launch of our beautiful new CommsUpdate site by taking a closer look at the year’s major global developments—the highs, the lows, the mergers, the auctions. All of it.
One thing is certain: there was more than enough telecom news to go around in 2019. If you haven't had a chance to peruse our wrap-up of January-June 2019, click here and have a read. Keep scrolling to take in the biggest news from the back half of the year.
A year is a long time in telecommunications–something that our CommsUpdate correspondents know all too well.
To celebrate the launch of our beautiful new CommsUpdate site, we’re taking a closer look at the year’s major global developments, including a few things that you might have missed along the way.
Keep scrolling to catch up on the biggest headlines from early 2019.
Fixed-line telephone markets in many European countries were originally served by a single national operator—but not the U.K. Most of the United Kingdom became a monopoly for BT, whose origins go back to 1846 and the world’s first commercial communications operator: the Electric Telegraph Company.
Dearest readers: will we see you in Hawaii next month?
Our own Jon Hjembo,Brianna Boudreau, Tim Stronge, Alan Mauldin, Dave Eulitt, Shermaine Yung, and Robert Schult will be in Honolulu for the Pacific Telecommunications Council annual conference happening January 19-22, 2020.
Naturally, our conference presenters Brianna, Jon, and Tim are bringing lots of research.
The telecom space is loaded with acronyms. (Take this from the people who recently published a post about the difference between IP VPN, DIA, and EVPN.)
Today our Business Broadband Research Service team is giving telecom newbies and pros alike the broadband acronym cheatsheet of their dreams.
Only a few of the world’s largest internet backbone providers get transit-free status, exchanging all of their traffic with other backbone providers via peering.
Alas, downstream internet service providers (ISPs), content providers, and other internet operators must purchase at least some upstream “transit” in order to connect their internal networks to the internet at large.
