Meanwhile where have the industry's revenues gone?
A revealing email from the FCC yesterday, with a link to a 306-page
PDF document carrying the US regulator's international traffic
data. It's only up to the end of 2003, mind you, but nevertheless
the information is shocking AT&T was carrying 7 billion minutes of
international traffic in 1993 at $1 a minute. A decade later it was
carrying almost twice as much for two thirds the revenue -- an average
$0.31 a minute. And AT&T's revenue per minute are way higher than its
rivals': Sprint billed $0.30 a minute for international traffic in
2003, MCI billed $0.13, and all other carriers an average of $0.10
a minute. Add it all up, and international traffic into and out of
the US has quadrupled in 10 years but revenue per minute has fallen
to a fifth of what it was, and overall billed revenues has gone from
$11 billion to $8 billion. And that, we hardly need to point
out, was during a decade when the industry was spending more on
international network connections that at any time in history. If
that doesn't frighten you, what will?
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Alan Burkitt-Gray (36045.98005456@ems.euromoneyplc.com)