iBasis Reports Record Volume Of International Phone Calls Carried Over the Internet During Holidays

WebKnowHow
Thursday, January 4, 2007; 06:32 AM

iBasis, Inc., a global VoIP company, today announced it carried a record volume of phone traffic over the Internet during the Christmas and New Years holidays. iBasis terminated 53.6 million minutes of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) traffic during Christmas Day, a 30 percent increase over 2005, and 52.9 million minutes on New Years Day, up 38 percent from 2006.

“While they were certainly record traffic days for iBasis, the holidays may have been the two greatest 24-hour periods of Internet-based phone activity in history,” said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. “While VoIP continues its rapid growth we are able to leverage the lower cost of IP bandwidth and equipment to scale our network very efficiently to take advantage of the growth opportunity. We fully expect to set new records as soon as Mother’s Day, which has historically exceeded the traffic volume of the preceding holidays.”

“As a leading carrier of international phone calls, and an operator of one of the most extensive international VoIP networks, iBasis really does have its finger on the pulse of international Internet voice traffic,” said Stephan Beckert, director of research at TeleGeography, a widely recognized source for global telecommunications statistics and analysis. “VoIP has again seen a dramatic year-over-year increase, and with these record-setting holiday statistics from iBasis, it’s clear a worldwide migration to IP-based communications is well underway.”

Based on Telegeography projections and iBasis’ current annual run rate of approximately 12 billion minutes of traffic (Q3 2006), the company carries an estimated 20 percent of the world’s international VoIP traffic. The iBasis Network is a global VoIP platform with over 1,000 points of presence in more than 100 countries. The lower cost of IP infrastructure continues to enable iBasis to expand the capacity of its network to accommodate dramatic growth with relatively low capital expenditure. Record traffic periods, which typically occur during major religious and national holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s, Mothers’ Day, Ramadan, Eid, Diwali, and Chinese New Year, demonstrate the scalability of the iBasis network. Phone traffic over the iBasis network on these holidays increases by 30% or more over non-holiday traffic.

About iBasis

Founded in 1996, iBasis (NASDAQ: IBAS) is one of the world's leading wholesale carriers of international long distance telephone calls, and a provider of retail prepaid calling services including the Pingo® web-based offering (www.pingo.com) and disposable calling cards sold by major distributors and stores across the U.S. iBasis customers include large carriers and innovative new service providers including AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile, China Unicom, IDT, Qwest, Skype, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, and Yahoo!. In 2005, the Company carried 7.8 billion minutes of international traffic. The iBasis Network is one of the most extensive international Voice over IP networks in the world, with over 1,000 points of presence providing direct service to more than 100 countries utilizing technology that enables high call completion and voice quality. iBasis' worldwide headquarters are in Burlington, Mass., USA. Additional information is available at www.ibasis.com or by calling (781) 505-7500.

iBasis and Pingo are registered marks, The iBasis Network and the global VoIP company are trademarks of iBasis, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.