NEW YORK (AP) — About 13 percent of international voice traffic is now carried by Internet telephony, the low-cost, feature-rich technology lately being introduced to consumers.
Although less than one-fifth of 1 percent of U.S. phone lines use a Voice over Internet Protocol phone service such as Vonage, the technology is making huge inroads behind the scenes, in long-distance networks and at big companies, according to a new report by TeleGeography.
The 13 percent of global phone traffic that analyst Stephan Beckert estimates is now transported via VoIP accounts for nearly 24.5 billion minutes a year. In 2002, VoIP's share of international traffic was 10 percent; it was 4 percent in 2000.
TeleGeography said its research "suggests that VoIP can transform a century-old business in just a few years."