By increasing a sizeable 44 percent in 2012 to a total of 167 billion minutes, Skype's service usage now represents one third of all global traffic, which itself saw a growth of five percent to 490 billion minutes over the year.
The revelation was made on Wednesday by market research/consultant firm TeleGeography, which has been in operation as a leading telecom information provider since 1989.
TeleGeography reports that despite the steady decline of international phone traffic growth, Skype and selfsame voice and messaging applications continue to see increases at a "stunning pace."
Skype's growth of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that garnered by all international carriers in the world, combined.
Had Skype's traffic been added to the number of international phone calls made in 2012, the year's international voice traffic would have increased 13 percent, which TeleGeography says would be "in line with historical trends."
Although cross-border communications numbers overall have not diminished, Wednesday's announcement heralds the fact that "an ever growing number of callers have chosen to take telcos [traditional telephony] out of the equation."
"The pressure on carriers will continue to mount in the coming years," said TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert.
"While Skype is the best-known voice application, it's far from the only challenger to the PSTN [public switched telephone network, or the global public circuit-switched telephone networks].
"Google (Talk and Voice), WeChat (Weixin), Viber, Nimbuzz, Line, and KakaoTalk have also become popular. And, perhaps most ominously for telcos, Facebook recently added a free voice calling feature to its Messenger application."
First released in 2003 by Estonian developers Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, Skype quickly became a video chat platform employed by more than 600 million users, leading to its $8.5 bilion sale to Microsoft in 2011.
Skype is a free service for callers connecting with other Skype users. Calls can be made to conventional landline/mobile phones, but users are then charged via a debit-based account system.
2010 saw Skype's registered users leap from 474 million to 663 million, according to numbers revealed by the company's SEC filing.
Follow @profklickberg
