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VoIP Service Booming

Services that let consumers make phone calls over the Internet are building momentum. According to Yankee Group research, the consumer market for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling grew by more than 250 percent, with approximately 3 million people subscribing to a VoIP service last year. The trend should continue, with subscriber numbers expected to jump this year to a projected 8.4 million. By 2009, the Yankee Group predicts that there will be 28.5 million VoIP users in the United States.

VoIP pioneers such as Vonage and Skype have accounted for the majority of Internet telephony services in the past, but now other companies are entering the market. Time Warner signed up 270,000 digital phone subscribers in the first quarter of 2006, its biggest gain ever. Comcast, the largest cable provider in the United States, added 211,000 new phone customers during the same quarter, more than it had signed up during all of 2005. Even Internet companies such as AOL, Google, EarthLink and Yahoo are getting into the game with services that let PC users make calls not only between PCs but also from their computers to regular phones.