Skype commands 13 percent of international phone calls

Facebook is getting all the press with the high membership numbers but those numbers come close to the numbers that Skype has. What is even more impressive though is the effect that it is having on international call minutes.

In recent report by TeleGeography Research Skype-to-Skype calls accounted f or 13% of all international call minutes in 2009. Out of the 406 billion international call minutes a total of 54 billion were used by Skype calls. In 2008 Skype only accounted for 8 percent of international call minutes which amounted to 33 billion call minutes.

“Skype is now the largest provider of cross border communications in the world, by far,” Beckert said. “The proliferation of alternatives to telephone calls—including Skype for mobile devices, and Google’s gradual entry into the voice market—will present ever greater challenges to international carriers.”

via Techtified

I know I have been a Skype user for many years and while I’m not totally surprised with the fact that it has 520 million users the number of call minutes is quite an eye-opener.