Facebook Replacing Mobile Communications?

Mobile and fixed service providers face all sorts of competitors, most of them indirect. Email and instant messaging, for example, cannibalize some amount of voice traffic, as do over-the-top services such as Skype. In other cases, over-the-top applications simply "suck up all the oxygen in the room" by usurping the revenue created by those apps. In past years, telcos might have preferred to create the apps and keep the revenue themselves.

Some even think Facebook is in competition with mobile operators. Facebook has an integration deal with Skype for voice communications and in November 2010 unveiled an email offering.

In the Philippines, for example, the National Telecommunications Commission reports declining text message volumes as more people communicate with each other through the web and web-based apps.

The agency said that in 2009, the average Filipino user sent about 30 text messages per day, or a total of well over two billion messages. If the volume of those messages declines, there will be revenue implications for mobile service providers.

Business - Social network sites threaten to topple telco titans - INQUIRER.net