News / Voice
Bundled VoIP gains in 2005 traffic study
On 2 February 2006, a Sandvine traffic study reported that provider-branded internet telephony packages had become more prominent than third-party VoIP in Europe. It measured traffic across a sample of broadband households rather than counting every voice customer.
The reported shares
For the final quarter of 2005, the study put branded European VoIP at 51.2 percent of calls and Skype at 45 percent of minutes. It described similar momentum for bundled services in North America. These figures are the study’s historical measurements, not a current market ranking.
What bundling changed
The report’s explanation was straightforward: newcomers to broadband often took the phone service offered with their connection. That gave providers a ready distribution channel. It did not show that existing Skype users had stopped using the service, only that the mix of observed traffic had shifted.