Dec. 11, 2003 -- Adoption of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony for long distance calls has surged and now accounts for about nearly 13 percent of the world's international calls, according to new research from TeleGeography.
Cross-border VoIP calls totaled nearly 19 billion minutes in 2002, with the two largest VoIP carriers, ITXC and iBasis, each carrying more than 2.5 billion minutes, placing them among the world's largest international operators.
These carriers have achieved rapid growth by carrying traffic on behalf of other long-distance service providers, according to TeleGeography, a unit of PriMetrica. Consequently, most end-users are likely unaware that many of their phone calls are traversing the Internet, rather than traditional long-distance networks.
"The combination of aging regulations and new technology enabled startup carriers to capture significant market share in only a few years," noted PriMetrica analyst Stephan Beckert. "While the FCC debates the future of retail VoIP services, millions of consumers already use VoIP to make international calls every day."
TeleGeography projects that final 2003 numbers will show 24.5 billion minutes of international VoIP calling, about 12.8 percent of the market. Growth of VoIP in 2004 will likely be accelerated by today's announcement this week that AT&T will launch a major new VoIP initiative.

PriMetrica's communications industry research delivers time-sensitive statistics and insight on markets and service provider on subjects ranging from wireless carrier competition to global Internet backbone traffic. PriMetrica is headquartered in San Diego, California, with U.S. East Coast offices in Washington, DC and European offices in London and Exeter, U.K.