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:

Scroll through our gallery above to see who make this latest SIP trunking scorecard.