International voice communication service provider, Skype is gradually turning up as a formidable challenge to conventional telecom operators. A new research on international voice traffic and services conducted by research firm, Telegeography reveals that Skype’s cross-border traffic grew 41 percent.

“Skype’s traffic growth has been remarkable,” said TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert. “Only five years after its launch, Skype has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world.”

Skype registered 33 billion minutes of usage which is 8 percent of the total global international voice traffic.

Operators too have gained from Skype’s service as the ‘Skype Out’ service lets users to make calls to conventional telecom connections. In 2008, this amounted to 8.4 billion minutes of calls.

The research says that international voice traffic grew by 14 percent in 2008 and is expected to grow 12 percent in the current year to reach 384 billion minutes However the increase is not likely to be reflected in the revenues which will mostly remain flat.