Eight SIP trunking companies received the highest recognition, four stars, in the Eastern Management Group 2020 customer satisfaction survey. They are: 8x8, Bandwidth, BroadSoft (now Cisco), Flowroute, IntelePeer, Inteliquent, Level 3 (now Lumen), and Twilio. Thousands of IT managers participated in the survey, selecting the winners from 37 SIP trunking providers.
The Eastern Management Group 2020 satisfaction study reflects a more rigorous vendor evaluation than in previous years. IT managers judged their providers on 12 customer satisfaction measurements. Respondents represented SIP trunking customers in seven world regions and 20 vertical markets in three industry sectors: industrial, commercial, and government education medical (GEM).
For eight companies to receive the highest award in one year is a remarkable achievement, and here's why. Customers are no longer willing to judge SIP trunking vendors on price alone. Today, expectations are lofty.
Increasingly, SIP customers expect:
- Fast and reliable SIP trunks and access
- Interconnections with global tier one carriers
- Local hubs
- Dual redundant infrastructure
- Global infrastructure
- Self-serve customer portal
- Customer management tools
- Security
Customers have the right to expect — that is to say, demand — much from SIP trunking providers. The market is rich, large, and growing. SIP trunking sales will approach $18 billion in 2021, 8% higher than in 2020.
Nearly 100% of all businesses have SIP capability on the most recent new phone purchased. Eighty percent of all companies now use SIP trunking. Of the total, 40% are in the U.S. and 25% in Europe.
Facing such demand, the best SIP trunking providers meet and exceed customer expectations by delivering carrier-grade SIP trunking. We consider carrier-grade SIP trunking the gold standard.
What Makes SIP trunking Grow?
While cost continues to be the number one driver of SIP trunk sales, its emphasis is diminishing. Today there are emerging catalysts that will profoundly influence SIP trunking demand for years to come.
Productivity improvement and process improvement applications delivered by UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, and video are accelerating SIP trunking requirements; this includes work-from-home, eCommerce, messaging, video, and mobile. COVID-19 may be accelerating cloud application adoption rates by four to five years.
Eight Winners
Eastern Management Group evaluates SIP trunking providers on 12 customer satisfaction measurements across three categories: product, vendor experience, and customer delight.
Eight companies lead the 2020 field with four stars:
8x8 — With its well-equipped SIP trunking service, 8x8 has moved upmarket to serve larger enterprises.
- 25% of 8x8 SIP trunking customers are mid-market and enterprise businesses based on our independent research
- 8x8 operates a global SIP infrastructure with 16 data centers to assure call quality. All the media is local
Bandwidth — The company is expanding globally and serving larger business customers.
- Our research shows 19% of Bandwidth's customers have more than 300 employees
- Superbly reliable access to cloud-based voice and 911, built for scale
- Real-time disaster recovery and IP failover
- Strong porting support
- Many well-known large customers, including GoDaddy, Microsoft, and Google
BroadSoft — This Cisco business rates high for reliability.
- Operates the esteemed UCaaS platform used by hundreds of carriers
- Our research shows 29% of BroadSoft SIP trunking customers have more than 20,000 employees
- 43% of customers are service providers
Flowroute — Is now part of Intrado
- Recognized in 2019 as top SIP trunking provider for customer satisfaction by Eastern Management Group
- Flowroute HyperNetwork is a rich SIP trunking offer to fulfill carrier-grade demands with the programmability, automation, and on-demand scale of cloud computing
IntelePeer — This is the company's first appearance in Eastern Management Group's satisfaction survey
- Atmosphere SIP is the flagship SIP product
- Versatile connectivity options for connecting SIP trunking (i.e., OTT, MPLS, private line, SD-WAN)
- International reach: 190 countries, 130 carrier relationships, 845 mobile carriers
- Eastern Management Group primary research shows
- 20% of SIP customers have 300 to 500 employees (mid-market)
- 50% of customers are professional services businesses
Inteliquent — Subsidiary of Onvoy, owned by GTCR private equity
- Focuses on superior customer service to help design, provision, manage, and repair services
- The network carries more than 22+ billion voice minutes per month
- Serves over 196 markets
- Reaches 10,000 on-net rate centers
Level 3 — Owned by Lumen (CenturyLink)
- Lumen brings together the talent, experience, infrastructure, and capabilities of CenturyLink, Level 3, and 25+ other technology companies
- Eastern Management Group primary research finds:
- 25% of SIP trunk customers have more than 500 employees
- 15% have more than 1,000 employees
Twilio — Third consecutive year to receive Eastern Management Group's award for customer satisfaction
- Global PSTN connectivity for VoIP infrastructure, and deployable in minutes
- 140,000+ businesses
- A software-powered communications network that connects to carriers in more than 100 countries
- Instant global scale, unlimited capacity: will deploy all over the world
- Local and country-specific toll-free numbers
Where Are the Tier-One Carriers?
We don't think the absence of tier one carriers from the highest-rated SIP trunking companies is too surprising. However, our study of 37 SIP trunking providers included all the largest tier one carriers. They operate the best and richest global networks used by the SIP trunking providers without question. While none of these companies — except for Level 3 — made it to the four-star provider list, some are close. In that category, we find Verizon and CenturyLink. Next year we would like to expect a few more.
