No surprises here that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony is set to grow, with another 1.9 million users expected to join in within a year. A report from Continental Research, based on interviews with 3,000 adults, has found that Skype is by far with most popular solution, with 48 per cent of the VoIP calls made from the UK last year using the software.
The next most popular service was Microsoft's MSN Messenger, with a fifth of all calls, followed by US company Vonage's service (6 per cent), BT (6 per cent) and Wanadoo (2 per cent). Most VoIP calls are free to other computer owners, as long as the recipients of the call use the same software. Calls to different VoIP providers, landlines and mobile phones are chargeable at rates of around 2p per minute.
VoIP is set to become more and more important to us; 56 per cent of those with VoIP said that they expected to increase their use of the service.