iBasis carried a record volume of phone traffic over the Internet during Mother’s Day. One of the world’s leading wholesale carriers of international long distance telephone calls – and operator of the world’s most extensive international VoIP network – iBasis terminated 54.9 million minutes of traffic during the holiday. The mark topped the previous record by 1.3 million minutes, set on Christmas Day 2006, and represented a 27.50 percent increase over Mother’s Day 2006.

Data generated by the company’s network operating center showed The iBasis Network completed a total of 7,139,922 calls during Mother’s Day. Analysis also showed Latin America overwhelmingly taking top honors in Mother’s Day phoning activity with countries from the region dominating rankings in call volume, increase over prior year and over average Sunday traffic, and length of call duration (see below for complete rankings).

“With the help of efficient VoIP networks like ours, calling Mom on her special day has become fairly economical, no matter where in the world she is,” said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. “The international calling market is already more than 300 billion minutes-per-year, and it’s growing about 14% per year. Increasingly, that traffic is carried by VoIP carriers, and I’m proud that iBasis continues to lead the way.”

Below are additional findings on Mother’s Day calling habits based upon the company’s international traffic volume and data analysis conducted by the iBasis. Rankings are in descending order and reflect calls originating from outside of the countries highlighted.

• Ten Most-Called Countries on Mother’s Day: Mexico, Brazil, United States, China, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Turkey, India, Argentina.
• Top five country calling increases from Mother’s Day 2006 to 2007: United States, El Salvador, India, Peru, Argentina.
• Countries with calls of the longest average duration On Mother’s Day (in minutes): Mexico (17.7), Laos (14.7), Serbia (13.1), Chile (13.1), Lithuania (12.7), Portugal (12.5), El Salvador (12.5), Argentina (12.4), Hungary (12.1), Malta (11.4).
• Top five countries showing greatest call volume increases on Mother’s Day versus annual Sunday average: Colombia, Peru, Brazil, United States, China.

Based on analyst firm Telegeography’s projections, and iBasis’ current annual run rate of more than 13 billion minutes of traffic, 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 enables iBasis to expand its network to accommodate dramatic growth quickly and 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 on these holidays often increases by 30 percent or more over non-holiday traffic.