Skype Users Consume 2 Billion Minutes a Day

Skype users now use two billion minutes a day. It's difficult to estimate how much of that usage represents cannibalization of international traffic or messaging. Not all of that usage would have occurred, were Skype unavailable.

But much of the usage does represent a shift of existing usage from the public network (cannibalizes existing demand) and some represents avoided usage usage (minutes of use that would have been added to public networks, but was shifted to Skype instead).

International Long Distance Traffic Growth, Carriers vs. Skype 

Source: TeleGeography

According to TeleGeography, international long distance traffic grew four percent in 2011, to 438 billion minutes. 

That growth rate was less than one-third of the industry’s long-run historical average of 13 percent annual growth.