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.
Over the past decade, traffic to mobile phones in emerging markets has driven international wholesale market growth.
In the figures above, you'll notice that revenues from calls to mobiles in emerging markets (the yellow segments) noticeably bulged from $9.7 billion in 2012 to $10.7 billion in 2022.
As a portion of overall wholesale carrier revenues, calls to advanced economies shrank, as did revenues from calls to fixed lines in emerging markets.
The next figure shows a ranking of some of the world’s largest international carriers.
The top nine operators in the figure carried nearly half of all global traffic in 2022, about 178 billion minutes.
Among the nine largest carriers in the world, only Deutsche Telecom terminated more traffic in 2022 than in 2021.
You'll find additional insights in our new International Voice Report Executive Summary.
This analysis covers international call traffic, cross-border OTT traffic, wholesale revenues and traffic, traffic volumes of major carriers, and more.