Lumen Tops Latest Omdia SIP Trunking Service Scorecard, Bandwidth Biggest Standout
Bandwidth's market momentum was the strongest across the top 10 providers.
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Lumen Technologies has worked to strengthen its position in the enterprise services market, including SIP trunking. Over the past year, the company turned a page with the rebranding of itself as Lumen. Moreover, Lumen has remained a leader in this scorecard by maintaining its position as the largest SIP trunking provider in North America, with strength in large enterprise and multinationals, and with Cisco, Microsoft and Zoom environments.
“Lumen has the advantage of a global direct sales force and channel partner program,” Omdia’s Diane Myers said. “The company maintains more than 100 master, agent and VAR partners. The VARs and select global system integrators provide professional services in migration to the cloud for UC, particularly for Cisco and Microsoft implementations.”
Verizon had another strong year, growing its SIP trunking lines and ending 2020 with the second-largest installed base of SIP trunks.
“The company continues to be a benchmark for service capabilities in the SIP trunking space,” Myers said. “Verizon’s SIP trunking service is available in up to 40 countries, and in 28 of those countries it includes complete PSTN replacement.”
Verizon is focused on the medium and large enterprise segments, and its service development reflects that. It has also been successful in selling its connectivity services to multinationals seeking to connect offices in the United States, EMEA and Asia Pacific. Verizon was one of the first providers to offer centralized, multi-site, multi-country designs.
Bandwidth is the seventh-largest provider, but its market momentum was the strongest across the top 10 providers along with an above-average financial score. That put Bandwidth in third place on this year’s scorecard. SIP trunking is a core service offering for Bandwidth and underpins all voice connections.
“Bandwidth is a standout in this year’s report, with the largest growth in 2020 as it completed its acquisition of Voxbone, and has a strong position around APIs for its partners and enterprise users,” Myers said.
Twilio is an unconventional player that has helped redefine what SIP trunking can be in a space traditionally led by telcos, Myers said.
“One important way Twilio differentiates itself is through its analytics capabilities, Voice Insights for Elastic SIP Trunking,” she said. “The insights are designed to help customers understand the quality of their SIP calls, and diagnose call establishment and performance issues, no matter how the call is made or received. Voice Insights baseline features of call summaries and insights dashboard are included with Elastic SIP Trunking services. Advanced metrics are available on a per-minute usage basis.”
Inteliquent‘s fifth ranking is the result of continued strong market share and average market momentum relative to the other top 10 providers, Myers said. Inteliquent’s SIP trunking platform can support customers with requirements of up to 100,000 concurrent calls while providing access to an extensive phone number footprint with availability in over 12,400 on-net rate centers.
AT&T continues to be a top provider in the SIP trunking market through the growth of its installed base, nationwide presence, market momentum and financial stability, Myers said. AT&T’s SIP trunking service falls under the AT&T IP Flexible Reach portfolio. Its size and reach are a competitive advantage over most other providers in the market.
Fusion Connect emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early 2020 and its management team has renewed its focus on connectivity solutions that include its SIP trunking. The company sells to businesses of all sizes, but its sweet spot is the medium to large enterprise, especially businesses with multiple locations.
IntelePeer continues to sell and grow SIP trunking services successfully. However, it has pivoted to its CPaaS portfolio. The company is not giving up on its SIP trunking business, but it’s no longer a core focus. IntelePeer makes it onto the scorecard because of the size of its existing installed base and its continued growth momentum. It has technical partnerships with Cisco, IBM and Ribbon.
Intrado, formerly West, is a newcomer to the scorecard through its Flowroute and Hoot Connect brands. They reside under its cloud collaboration business. Intrado’s enterprise communications supports telco network functionality such as direct inward dialing (DID), emergency services, and call termination/origination that feed the Flowroute and Hoot Connect services.
Windstream has gained a strong position in business VoIP through a broad portfolio of hosted, managed PBX, and connectivity services. By acquiring EarthLink and Broadview Networks, Windstream shored up its overall portfolio and channel reach for business VoIP and UC services, including SIP trunking.
Windstream has gained a strong position in business VoIP through a broad portfolio of hosted, managed PBX, and connectivity services. By acquiring EarthLink and Broadview Networks, Windstream shored up its overall portfolio and channel reach for business VoIP and UC services, including SIP trunking.
Lumen Technologies has once again claimed the top spot on Omdia’s SIP Trunking Service Provider Scorecard for North America. Lumen, formerly CenturyLink, has maintained the top spot for six years now.
The installed base of SIP trunks is important to the overall leadership score, according to Omdia. However, financial stability and market share momentum set providers apart.
As features are not a critical component of SIP trunking, fewer things differentiate one provider’s offering from the next. A focus on security, interoperability, pricing and reliability remain key attributes. In addition, flexible provisioning, APIs and self-service portals are all growing in importance.
SIP Trunking Just as Important as UCaaS, CCaaS
Omdia’s Diane Myers
Diane Myers is Omdia’s chief analyst of enterprise collaboration and author of the scorecard. (Omdia and Channel Futures share a parent company, Informa.)
“Although much of the attention on business VoIP services today is focused on enhanced services such as UCaaS, CPaaS and CCaaS, SIP trunking is equally important for providers in that it is the next generation of voice connectivity and provides a bridge to these other services,” she said. “It does not have the glitz and glamour of the XaaS services. But it is the backbone of businesses communications.”
While the large network operators have long held dominant positions in business voice connectivity, a host of competitive and non-network-based providers have solidified their position in SIP trunking, Myers said.
“This market continues to be marked with mergers and acquisitions,” she said. “In a service market based on lower cost, scale is necessary for a successful business. While traditional incumbent and competitive operators have come to dominate the voice connectivity market, a few niche providers have carved out space for themselves. The name of the game with the large network operators is consolidation. And it has impacted the top end of the SIP trunking market, resulting in businesses using a host of different options from relatively smaller, alternative providers.”
Omdia identified the largest service providers measured by number of SIP trunks and then evaluated them based on the following four criteria:
Financial strength.
Market share momentum.
Service development.
Support options
Scroll through our gallery above to see who make this latest SIP trunking scorecard.
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