PhoneGnome Fun Fact – landline usage reduced by 61 percent
As a percent of total minutes for calls placed via PhoneGnomes, we find that only 39% are delivered via the traditional phone network. The area shown as PSTN in the chart to the left are minutes delivered via the customer’s local telephone service (landline). The area shown as “ITSP” are calls terminated to the PSTN network (to plain phones), but via an Internet calling service.
Free calls are still in the minority as a percentage of minutes, but significant at 19 percent. If we broke these calls down by “cost” we might find that these free minutes represent a much larger chunk of customers’ telephone bills than 19%, given that the calls shown as PSTN include all free local calls too.
The 3% shown as “Other Free” minutes represent calls terminated to other interoperable VoIP services. 3% may not sound like much, but it’s a start, and with more and more companies participating in peering and interoperable VoIP we will see this number climb in the future, just as Internet email usage did.
The amount of minutes delivered via ITSP is also striking, given that only about half of PhoneGnome customers use an ITSP service.
The total savings represented here are the total of the costs that would have been incurred for the 19% of free minutes, plus the savings over tradiitonal costs for the ITSP minutes delivered via discount Internet calling services. This combined total of 61% of minutes clearly represents significant diversion of revenue from the tradiitonal carriers and significant savings for PhoneGnome customers.
I think it’s quite impressive that well under half of the minutes placed over the PhoneGnome universe are calls placed via the landline, especially given that this includes all local calls, which can represent as much as 60% of calls placed by typical telephone users. This means, on average, PhoneGnome drops landline usage by 61 percent.
July 8th, 2006 at 6:47 am
[...] PhoneGnome founder David Beckemeyer has posted some interesting statistics about PhoneGnome users on his blog. He breaks out calls terminated on the PSTN, an ITSP, other PhoneGnome users, and free peering to other interoperable VoIP systems. The interesting numbers? [...]
July 9th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
I’m not exactly sure what you are saying. I know gnome uses Skype, if you want that is, but what do you mean about the 61%. I plan on getting it. thank you. Might even keep the existing voip that I have too.
July 10th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
[...] Interesting study from PhoneGnome, one of the more technologically savvy and open free VoIP providers. They have interesting data from their users that shows a rapid decline in regular PSTN phone usage and a significant percentage of totally free phone calls. The rest are calls initiated via IP and terminated in a regular PSTN line. PhoneGnome believes that the significance is that 61% of regular landline calls are eliminated by PhoneGnome, ceratinly a worthwhile statistic, but more interesting is that already almost 20% of calls are totally free. It seems clear to me where this is headed…now, about that access… [...]
July 12th, 2006 at 3:32 am
Do you have the call volumes associated with these numbers?
August 3rd, 2006 at 12:06 am
Karl, what we are saying is that, of all minutes placed using the PhoneGnome phone, only 39% were sent via the local landline service. If you didn’t have PhoneGnome, of course 100% of those calls would have gone out that landline. With PhoneGnome now, 61% of those minutes no longer go via the landline. Instead, they were deliver via an Internet to PSTN provider, or to a free end point (most likely another PhoneGnome, but could also be one of our peering partners). Make sense?
This nice thing about the free calls is that are really free, free like email free. Unlike the way the telephone companies, and even VoIP companies, try to tell us “free” calls cost $24.99 (or more) per month.