Comcast, 8x8 Top Hosted VoIP Provider Rankings for North America

Comcast, 8×8, Verizon and West are the top hosted VoIP providers in North America, according to the North America Business VoIP Service Leadership Scorecard, which is due out next week from Infonetics Research.

“Comcast’s nationwide push of its Business VoiceEdge service helped Comcast grow its installed base and maintain its No. 1 position in Infonetics’ hosted VoIP leadership scorecard for the second year in a row,” noted Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research. “8×8 follows right on the heals of Comcast, making a big leap this year thanks to improved financial stability, continued growth of its installed base and a focus on service enhancements.”

At the end of 2012, the top hosted VoIP providers had more than 200,000 seats each while the cutoff to the top 10 was still slightly below 100,000 seat counts.

These numbers are not surprising consider the hosted VoIP and UC market in North America remains highly fragmented, with a broad mix of providers, including traditional telcos, cable MSOs, VARs/agents, PBX/UC vendors and pure-play hosted providers.

That said, the report noted that the market underwent several mergers and acquisitions in the past year, including the ShoreTel’s March 2012 acquisition of M5 Networks.

The same report also ranks the top IP connectivity providers in North America. For the fifth straight year, Verizon was No. 1 followed by XO, AT&T and Windstream.

With the emergence of SIP trunking, IP connectivity is quickly becoming a commodity market with escalating price competition, the report found, noting that to succeed providers need financial stability, highly automated processes and broad geographic reach to gain volume.

Infonetics’ North America business VoIP scorecard rankings are based on criteria such as installed base of lines or seats, financial stability, market strategy, service capabilities, and support options.

Service providers ranked include 8×8, AT&T, Bandwidth.com, Broadview Networks, Broadvox, Cbeyond, Comcast, Cox, Level 3, Megapath, RingCentral, ShoreTel, Sprint, Thinking Phone Networks, Verizon, Vocalocity, West, Windstream and XO.