Internet phone calls

After years of modest activity, online phone calling has taken off as a quarter of American adult Internet users (24%) have placed phone calls online. That amounts to 19% of all American adults.

On any given day 5% of Internet users are going online to place phone calls. Both figures are marked increases from previous readings in surveys by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Using different question wording, the Project found in February 2007 that 8% of Internet users (6% of all adults) had placed calls online and 2% of Internet users were making calls on any given day. At various points during the 2000s we asked similar questions and found that at most about a tenth of Internet users had ever used the Internet to place calls and the daily figure never rose above 1% of Internet users.