US and UK consumers switch on VoIP

The percentage of British adults who say they have heard of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or already make telephone calls via an internet connection has increased from just a little over one third (37 per cent) to nearly half (46 per cent) in the last nine months.

A similar shift in awareness and use has also been discovered in the US, with the number of people who have heard of or are using VoIP technology rising from 36 per cent to 51 per cent.

The findings come from a Harris Interactive survey measuring VoIP awareness and usage conducted online in October 2005 among 1,089 US adults and 1,117 British adults.

However, there are still a substantial proportion of adults who are unaware of the technology – 41 per cent of British adults and 36 per cent of US adults. Additionally, women are far less likely than men to have heard about VoIP in both Great Britain – 28 per cent of women versus 57 per cent of men - and the United States – 34 per cent of women versus 62 per cent of men.

With VoIP competition in the market increasing, there is plenty of choice for consumers, although the survey found clear leaders in awareness. Vonage in the US and Skype and BT in Great Britain are the leaders of the pack.

The danger for Vonage and Skype though, in a broadening market, is that they have higher awareness levels amongst men than women (for Vonage, 54 per cent of men versus 34 per cent of women, and for Skype, 58 per cent of men versus 30 per cent of women). But more mass market players such as Yahoo, BT, AOL and Verizon were found to enjoy awareness levels equally as strong among both genders in both countries.

Among potential users in both countries, substantial numbers say free calls between users of the same provider (53 per cent of British adults and 43 per cent of US adults) and cheap local/national telephone calls (44 per cent of British adults and 49 per cent of US adults) would appeal to them if they were to consider making calls via an internet connection.