19 percent of U.S. adults have made Internet phone calls, says Pew

May 31, 2011 By Jeffrey Van Camp

Almost one fifth of all U.S. adults have made an Internet phone call over a VOIP provider like Skype or Vonage and one in 20 does so on a daily basis, says a new Pew survey.

Nearly a fifth of all adults in the United States have made a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) call on the Internet, according to a new survey by Pew Research. Among Internet users (a majority of the population), that number is 24 percent and on any given day 5 percent of Internet users go online to make phone calls. The number is a big increase from the 6 percent of U.S. adults who made Internet phone calls in 2007. Among them, only 2 percent made Internet calls on a daily basis.

Skype, which is being purchased by Microsoft, remains the most popular way to talk on the Net. However, this shows that, while many users know about and have tried online calling, few have switched from more traditional cellular and landline phone calls.

Below, we’ve included Pew’s demographic breakdown of online phone callers. While the demographics appear fairly varied, it is obvious that urban/suburban folks with higher income and at least a college degree use Internet calling more than most. Pew points out that there are also “modest differences tied to age: younger Interent users are more likely to place online calls than older users.”

Will Microsoft’s purchase of Skype harm these numbers in the years to come?

Showing 2 comments

Cow Layfo at 9:34pm 31st May 2011 You simply can't beat the price of services like Skype. The moment the market figures that out will be an interesting day.
keinemoxie at 8:53am 31st May 2011 I find this post highly inaccurate. Most phone providers now days are moving towards VoIP in homes. If you have fttp (fiber to the premis), then you have a VoIP phone, unless you asked your provider otherwise. If you've worked for a call center, then you've used VoIP. Most of the phones in the state of Utah are VoIP. If you added in those statistics then you'd find that there are hardly any people in the US that have yet to use VoIP services, they probably just didn't realize it at the time. I think its surprising how much cheaper it is to use VoIP rather than an existing copper pair from your local service provider. VoIP gives you the advantage of free local and long distance within the Continental US, and cheaper international rates. I'd estimate that it will only be a matter of years before everyone has VoIP services installed in their home, and only a couple more years until POTS (plain old telephone service) is obsolete.