NGL02-5: Minutes Trading in The International Long-Distance Voice Market

This paper outlines trends reshaping the business of International Long Distance (ILD) voice minutes trading. Our analysis is centered on Arbinet´s business model: an electronic market-place for trading ILD voice minutes. Arbinet, who adopted a minute-based termination model, claims to have switched about 12 x 10⁹ minutes in 2005 with 13% growth. Since 2003, other competitors, like Stealth´s VPF (Voice Peering Fabric), entered the long distance voice market by introducing different flavors of VoIP (Voice over IP) peering. VPF, who adopted a flat pricing scheme, claims to have routed traffic for an equivalent 18 x 10⁹ minutes in 2005 with 750% annual growth. VPF installed its first switch in London late 2005, thus stepping into the ILD arena. The huge growth of flat peering exchanges does not necessarily imply that Arbinet has to give up its minute-based termination model in favor of flat or free peering arrangements. As a matter of fact, the way termination model will change in the future is far to be clear. Drivers that determine who will be fit to survive in this thinly profitable business are thus emphasized.