Jan 9, 2025
A Bit Over-The-Top: What Is OTT Traffic?
The international voice market's trajectory is an inexorable downward spiral, and “over-the-top” (OTT) communications services are most certainly the main culprit.
The international voice market's trajectory is an inexorable downward spiral, and “over-the-top” (OTT) communications services are most certainly the main culprit.
For our next episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we look to the sky.
TeleGeography Explains the Internet is back from summer break.
We return a little older, a little wiser, and you can bet that we've done the summer reading. To that end, we're starting this season with a classic TeleGeography Explains deep dive.
The topic? U.S. telecom law!
Telecom is a regulated industry, and U.S. law holds complexities that impact what happens across the larger ecosystem. I have a lot to learn about telecom policy, so thankfully I'm joined in this explainer by Jeff Long, an attorney in private practice with broad experience in both the data center and telecom industry.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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