Three U.S. companies remain perched on Vertical Systems Group’s global Ethernet provider leaderboard, but Verizon has dropped another notch.

Vertical’s newest leaderboard shows that Verizon fell from fifth in mid-2015 to sixth in mid-2016, overtaken by Level 3 Communications.

AT&T still sits in fourth place overall and is the highest-ranked U.S. provider.

The leaderboard didn’t change at all from its ranking a year ago, except for Level 3’s leapfrogging of Verizon. Verizon ranked third in 2014 but has slowly slipped over the past two years. The most recent U.S. leaderboard had Charter overtaking Verizon.

“2016 is the beginning of a technological transformation of global Ethernet services, as carriers worldwide enhance offerings enabled by SDN, NFV and LSO. Winning providers will be those that best utilize these technologies to improve service agility, cost control and deployment speed,” said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group.

The rankings take into account the number of billable retail ports outside of each company’s home country.{ad}

Orange Business continues to rank No. 1, trailed by Colt and BT Global Services of the U.K. Japan’s NTT rounds out the top seven.

The study noted that Level 3 has the “fastest growth in global provider ports” for those seven companies, due much to its acquisitions in recent years.