India Broadband Forum

India Broadband Internet

Voice minutes refer to the “total conversation minutes” on a telephone. The concept of charging for voice calls by the minute has been in vogue since the beginning. Traditionally, the wholesale minute model has been a part of the telecom industry. Companies such as Teleglobe, TPC Networks, Enron and others are voice minute vendors. With the advent and swift penetration of VoIP, the minutes-of-use concept is undergoing sweeping changes.

Factors such as group calling plans, bundles of minute plans combined with greater mobile phone penetration and increased competition have driven the call tariffs down. Fixed telephony usage continued to decrease through 2005. Companies like AT&T offered attractive schemes such as ‘1,000-minute calling package’ with a view to capture people outside the offices. It turned into a replacement of the wireline. The Yankee Group is of the opinion that the improved quality of digital phones is also responsible for this development.

Statistics also show that fixed telephony usage has been on the decline in 2005. This has been attributed to substitution of fixed telephony by mobiles to make calls. A study in Europe evidenced this trend. In the UK and Italy - two countries with large subscriber base and huge volumes - the decline in fixed line voice traffic has been to the tune of -5.8 per cent and -6.8 per cent, in 2004 and 2005 respectively. On the other hand, in France and Spain, it has either stagnated or slightly declined.

The transfer of voice traffic over packet networks, particularly Voice over IP (VoIP), is becoming popular. Industry analysts are of the opinion that VoIP will become a multi-billion dollar business in the next few years. Value-added services such as SMS, MMS and video are also likely to influence the user preference. Cellular networks bundle enhanced features in packages at no additional charge and this is also going to spur an increase in the voice minutes used by the subscribers. In this ever changing telecom scenario, it would be interesting to watch how voice minutes would be distributed over mobile and fixed lines over the next few years.