Comcast was the leader of the pack in a recent study of VoIP services.

According to Infonetics Research’s scorecard, Comcast, 8×8, Verizon and West were the top hosted VoIP providers in North America while Verizon, XO, AT&T, and Windstream were the top IP connectivity providers in North America.

“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,” said 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.

“And for the fifth straight year, Verizon is No.1 in our IP connectivity leadership scorecard, followed closely by XO.”

Other highlights from the study included:

• Providers are settling into executing the mergers and acquisitions of the past year, including ShoreTel, which is already rolling out its ShoreTel Sky hosted solution to channel partners

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

• At the end of 2012, the top hosted VoIP providers had over 200,00 seats each while the cutoff to the top 10 was still slightly below 100,000 seat counts

• The hosted VoIP and UC market in North America remains highly dynamic, and businesses have a broad mix of providers to choose from, including traditional operators, cable MSOs, VARs/agents, PBX/UC vendors, and pure play hosted providers.