Within North America, Business VoIP Providers Consolidated Last Year

2011 proved to be a year full of consolidation in North America among business VoIP providers, Infonetics Research recently revealed. This is according to the market research firm’s excerpts from its annual North America Business VoIP Service Leadership Scorecard, a report which analyzes and ranks the top service providers in the hosted VoIP and unified communications (UC) services market and the IP connectivity market.

In fact, findings show that Comcast earned a high overall score of 33 out of 35 for hosted VoIP services. West, Verizon, and 8x8 are among the top hosted VoIP providers in North America, and Verizon Business earned a high overall score of 32 out of 35 for IP connectivity providers.

A large number of the top hosted business VoIP service providers had more than 100,000 VoIP and UC seats at the end of 2011, while other VoIP service provides had fewer than 50,000 seats, which the research firm believes is the sign of further consolidation in the future.

"After a banner 2010, 2011 was another year of consolidation in North America among business VoIP service providers. Though there are still a large number of VoIP service providers in North America, consolidation is starting to separate the large providers from the rest of the pack," said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research in a statement.

As the business VoIP environment is forever changing, traditional PBX and UC vendors including ShoreTel, NEC, Mitel, Avaya, and Cisco have forayed into the cloud. This transition has shaken up the competitive landscape for hosted business VoIP services, Infonetics Research added.