Business Phone Services

Dallas, United StatesHealth 71/100

XO Communications was an American telecommunications company founded in 1994 as NEXTLINK Communications and renamed to XO Communications in 2000, providing fiber-optic broadband, Ethernet, MPLS IP-VPN, dedicated Internet access, hosted PBX unified communications, and managed WAN services to businesses, enterprises, government agencies, and other service providers across the United States. At its peak, XO operated metro fiber networks in 40 major U.S. markets with more than 4,000 on-net buildings, 1.2 million fiber miles, and a 20,000-route-mile intercity backbone connecting 85 cities. In February, Verizon Communications announced an agreement to acquire XO Holdings' wireline business, and Verizon completed the approximately $1.5 billion acquisition in February. The XO Communications brand no longer operates independently — its network assets and enterprise customers were absorbed into Verizon Business, and www.xo.com now redirects to Verizon. This DirJournal profile is maintained as a historical reference for the acquired entity.

Evanston, United StatesHealth 74/100

Converged Communication Systems, LLC (CCS) is a U.S.-based business-communications integrator headquartered in Evanston, Illinois, with additional service locations across the Chicago metro area and nationwide support coverage. CCS is a full-service sales, installation, maintenance, and support organization for business telephone lines, PBX equipment, IP telephony, unified communications, contact centers, and data networks. The company specializes in Avaya as its primary IP-telephony platform while also supporting Cisco, NEC, Mitel, and Nortel systems, and it continues to maintain legacy AT&T and Lucent Technologies phone systems for customers not yet ready to migrate to newer platforms. Solution offerings include hosted PBX, cloud call-center software, and on-premises PBX systems, delivered by telecom engineers, phone-system programmers, and PBX field technicians. CCS positions itself as a legacy-plus-modern partner — one vendor for both existing Nortel/Avaya installations and new IP-telephony deployments.

San Jose, United StatesHealth 71/100

8x8, Inc. is a publicly traded cloud communications company founded in 1987 by Chi-Shin Wang and Y. W. Sing, both formerly of semiconductor firm Weitek, and is headquartered in Campbell, California. The company trades on the Nasdaq under ticker EGHT and reported 1,948 employees with approximately $736 million in annual revenue for fiscal year. Current CEO Samuel Wilson leads 8x8's XCaaS (Experience Communications as a Service) platform, which combines unified communications, contact center, video meetings, and communications APIs into a single cloud service. Notable acquisitions include Jitsi (, open-source video), Wavecell (, Singapore-based CPaaS), Fuze (, unified communications), and Maven Lab (). 8x8 serves customers across the United States, United Kingdom, Romania, Australia, Singapore, and Portugal, with a particular focus on mid-market and enterprise contact centers requiring integrated voice, chat, video, and analytics in a single platform.

United StatesHealth 63/100

BuyerZone was an online B2B lead-generation and comparison-shopping platform for business products and services, including business phone systems, PBX equipment, and telecom vendors. Founded in 1992 and based in Waltham, Massachusetts, BuyerZone connected small and mid-sized businesses seeking multi-vendor quotes with participating suppliers across categories from copiers and payroll to phone systems and voice-over-IP. In January, BuyerZone was acquired by Purch, a New York-based content and commerce company operating a portfolio of B2B and consumer sites., Future US, Inc. — the U.S. subsidiary of UK-listed Future plc — acquired Purch's B2B division, which was subsequently renamed and consolidated under Business.com. BuyerZone's telephone-systems RFQ product continues to route buyer requests to phone-system vendors as part of the Business.com portfolio, though the standalone BuyerZone brand has been de-emphasized under Future's ownership.