Traffic Trading in the Competitive International Voice Market

This paper highlights the trends that are reshaping the international long distance voice market. The authors' analysis focuses on voice exchanges, namely, electronic marketplaces where huge volumes of ILD voice traffic are traded and routed. Various existing models of voice exchanges are compared: Arbinet, which started in 1996, providing TDM circuit-switched interconnection; and newer exchanges, based natively on VoIP, namely, Voice Peering Fabric by Stealth, Infiniroute, XConnect, and Arena by Interoute. The evolution of interconnection mechanisms and the consequent impact on the role of exchanges are discussed. The Calling Party's Network Pays and the Bill & Keep interconnection commercial models are presented, and they discuss issues for their applicability.