30 March 2007

US Households Take VoIP Tel Services Onboard

Currently 9% of US households now use a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone service with figures predicted to rise rapidly, according to a survey.

Cable operators are driving growth in the US residential Voice over Internet VoIP telephone market, according to market research company In-Stat.

More than 10.6 million US households now have at least one active VoIP user, up from approximately 9 million households at the end of Q3, according to In-Stat. The emergence of the cable operators as a dominant market force seems to have slowed the growth of the client-based VoIP market, with only Skype showing gains in this segment during the 4th Quarter.

More than 61 % of active residential VoIP users reported that they had discontinued or replaced a traditional (non- VoIP) phone service when they got their VoIP service, including a huge 76 % of those who use only a network/ATA-based service like those offered by the cable companies or Vonage.

The ability to bypass international tolls continues to be a big driver of client-based VoIP services, with users of client-based VoIP services reporting that 52 % of their VoIP calls are international long distance while network/ATA-based VoIP users report only 6 % of their calls are international long distance.