Voice

Central American Cableco Takeovers are Reshaping the Region

Historically, Carlos Slim-backed America Movil and Spanish giant Telefonica have dominated the Central American telecom space.

However, the landscape is shifting.

Designing an Internet for the Next Billion Users

Neighbourly is Google's first Indian-inspired social network. It's taking on Facebook and WhatsApp in an internet market that will soon exceed 800 million people. 

This month we're reading about Google's pursuit of India's mobile market, as well as Skype's origin story, Verizon's 5G ambitions, and the state of affairs of the Middle East's mobile market. Keep scrolling to read it all for yourself.

The Ultimate Throwback Thursday: TeleGeography's First Map

TeleGeography started producing submarine cable maps in 1999, but we were mapping the world of telecommunications years prior to that.

Our first map got off the ground in 1996. This effort depicted a number of in-service cables. It also shows FLAG as a proposed cable, which is pretty neat.

A New Look Inside International Wholesale Services

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

With the recent update to the TeleGeography Report and Database, we know that wholesale carriers terminated approximately 363 billion minutes of traffic in 2016, down four percent from 2015.

Return of the Rise of the Apps

According to our TeleGeography Report and Database, 2015 marked a turning point in the international voice market—the first time since the Great Depression that international call traffic declined, even if only by one half percent. However, the slump in voice traffic metastasized in 2016, as carriers’ traffic slumped 4.5 percent to 528 billion minutes.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate

CommsUpdate is TeleGeography’s free daily summary of the top global telecom stories. Born out of desk research for TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database Service, CommsUpdate is produced by TeleGeography’s team based in the historic city of Exeter in Devon, England.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of CommsUpdate, we’ve put together a list of weird and wonderful facts about your favorite telecom newsletter.

The Telecom Stories That Dominated Our Blog in 2017

In 2017 you told us that you wanted to read about content providers, SD-WAN, internet capacity growth, and the submarine cable boom. So we wrote about those things!

We also covered the cloud, connectivity trends, network pricing, and much more.

As the year winds down, we pulled 10 of our most popular posts to capture the year in telecom. See if your favorite stories made the cut below.

A TBT to the First-Ever Federal Communications Commission Annual Report

Happy Throwback Thursday.

Today we're looking back to 1936 when the first annual report of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was released. (And it had everything: broadcasting! Cable television! Wireless telecommunications! Spectrum management!)

Island Hopping: Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa

TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database includes comprehensive coverage of the world’s major telecoms markets—but we also profile some of the smallest principalities, republics, and territories in the world.

Here’s another peek at what’s happening in three unique island markets.

Telephone All Over the World With This Throwback AT&T Advert

Call around the world for just $90!

In 1964, AT&T took out advertisements to remind consumers how affordable international long-distance service had become—just $12 for a typical overseas call.