Ipoque study: 95 Percent of all Internet Telephony is Skype
VoIP isn't a bandwidth threat:
Voice over IP (VoIP) only accounts for one percent of the Internet traffic, but is used by 30 percent of all users.
While many other VoIM and VoIP products include voice and video talk, apparently Skype (with 95% share) is the one people choose for calling:
Skype is by far the most popular Internet telephony application.
Culture and costs change behavior:
The popularity of instant messaging (IM) varies heavily from region to region. In the Middle East, 60 percent of all Internet users also use IM, in Germany, however, it is only 17 percent.
Do people substitute between IM and mobile texting, depending on availability and cost?
Ipoque makes products that examine and manage network traffic for ISPs and large enterprises. Source for this report:
Three petabytes of anonymous data representing over one million users in Australia, Eastern Europe, Germany, the Middle East and Southern Europe have been analyzed.
Comments
Isn't an imlication of this study that Skype traffic can be identified by inspection? If so for me that is more interesting.
Posted by: Aswath Rao | November 28, 2007 08:53 AM
Note that this data is not a comparison of all VOIP traffic but rather only VOIP traffic that transits an ISP where Ipoque's equipment might be installed. One suspects therefore that it does not include the VOIP traffic of telcom's or cable companies that supply "digital phones", but rather only the VOIP traffic of "independent" ISP's. The figure would still be relevant with respect to open standards' SIP, and is startling in any case. SIP is simply not keeping pace with Skype in terms of developing a viable ecosystem. See http://www.glimfeather.com/borderless/
Posted by: Aaytch | December 1, 2007 09:50 AM
Hold back the party! Unless, of course, you are absolutely convinced that the P2P use across the globe is adequately represented by study of data from Australia, Eastern Europe, Germany, the Middle East and Southern Europe.
Ipoque site also mentions that "The complete protocol distribution is only available for Germany and Middle East." I am even less convinced that those two regions represent the global use of VoIP.
I'm sorry, but the statistician in me thinks that the objective of the study has more to do with selling Ipoque gear than understanding P2P demographics or SIP vs. Skype battle outcome.
Posted by: matti | December 2, 2007 12:35 AM