According to Infonetics Research, Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA), 8x8, Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and West are the top hosted VoIP providers in North America. At the end of 2012, the top hosted VoIP providers had more than 200,00 seats each, while the cutoff to the top 10 was still slightly below 100,000 seat counts.The research house also ranked Verizon, XO, AT&T (NYSE:T) and Windstream the top IP connectivity providers in North America. 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.