Readers' Choice Awards 2022: Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

This month'due south PCMag Readers' Choice Honor survey asked you to rate your satisfaction with your isp (ISP). For almost of us, our broadband provider does much more than provide us with an cyberspace connection; it also links us to cable Telly and home phone service, in what is commonly known as a triple play.

Every bit nosotros've become more than dependent and entrenched with our ISP, bills keep to climb. According to inquiry firm Kagan, our pay Tv set bill has increased 74 pct since 2000 in inflation adjusted dollars.

There'due south little question that ISPs have provided us more for our dollars—more speed, more than channels, more phone features—but consumers say plenty is enough. They're looking for less expensive alternatives even if information technology ways sacrificing features. The Leichtman Inquiry Group recently reported that the top pay Television providers in the Us lost nearly 1.5 one thousand thousand subscribers in 2022. Many became string cutters and turned to pure internet streaming services like DirecTV At present and Sling Television set for their TV watching.

ISPs are fighting to stem the migration. The nation'due south largest, Comcast, is trying carrot and stick approaches. The carrot: subscribers to certain Comcast TV packages get Netflix included. The stick: in certain markets, the fastest internet packages are only offered to subscribers whose package besides includes Television receiver service.

Cost isn't the only influencer of ISP customer satisfaction. Our survey asked you to rate your satisfaction with your ISPs on several criteria. We wanted to know how satisfied you lot are with the speed and reliability of your connectedness, equally well every bit how happy you were when you needed to contact the ISP for customer service, technical support, and repairs. All these factors contribute to your overall perception of your Isp.

One of the biggest influencers of overall satisfaction is choice. About a third of respondents say there's no other ISP available to them (or they don't know if one is). When we bankrupt down the overall satisfaction rating for the most popular ISPs by whether or not the ISP was the just one available to the respondent, we saw very large gaps. Clearly, consumers like having a choice—ISPs that have competition in some places and are a monopoly in others become much lower overall scores when they are the but choice. Merely that'due south how the ISPs would prefer it.

RC18 - Satisfaction with Broadband Local Monopolies

Whether you have a choice or not, read on to see how satisfied your young man PCMag readers are with their internet service provider. You may find that you've got information technology skilful and your ISP is really delivering. Or, it may be the impetus yous need to cut the cord.

The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for ISPs was in the field from April 23 through May 14, 2022. For more information on how the survey is conducted, read the survey methodology. Each person who completed the survey was entered to win a $350Amazon.com gift carte.

You can win! Sign upward for the Readers' Choice Survey mailing list to receive invitations for future sweepstakes.

Wondering which ISPs are truly the fastest? Read The Fastest ISPs in the US 2022 report, and so test your own ISP's speed hither.

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Cyberspace Service Providers (ISPs) 2022

Thirteen certainly doesn't seem to be an unlucky number for Verizon Fios; 2022 marks the 13th directly twelvemonth that its fiber-to-the-home service has won our PCMag Readers' Choice Honor for ISPs.

The visitor receives peak marks on nearly every measure of satisfaction with the sole exception of satisfaction with fees. While it did not receive an admirable score on this measure, it's still amongst the height ISPs for cost. (In other words, no one is very happy with the fees they're paying for cyberspace service.)

RC18 - ISPs - Overall Scores

Verizon received an overall satisfaction rating of 8.1 on a scale from 0 (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied), the highest rating among all the ISPs in our survey and the same rating that it received last yr. RCN, which shared the Readers' Choice Honour with Verizon for the last three years, slipped a little bit this year but was shut behind with an overall satisfaction rating of 7.ix, a solid 2d.

RCN had the highest rating for satisfaction with fees at 6.iv. WOW! Internet came in second on this rating with a half dozen.ane, followed by AT&T Cobweb (5.8) and Verizon Fios (v.6). Nine of the sixteen ISPs in our results had satisfaction with fees ratings under 5.0. Consumers are conspicuously non happy with what they're existence charged, so it's no surprise that many are looking for ways to cut costs, including jettisoning services such equally Idiot box and telephone.

Fios had the highest rating for satisfaction with speed at 8.0, up very slightly from last year's 7.9. As with all satisfaction ratings, satisfaction with speed is based on perception rather than the actual, measurable speed. Still, among the ISPs that were also included in our 2022 Fastest ISPs study, satisfaction with speed ratings (from 0 to ten) generally correlated with the ISPs' real-earth speed ratings (measured in Megabits per 2nd).

RC18- Actual Speed vs. Speed Satisfaction

Verizon Fios does rate better than Suddenlink for speed satisfaction— even though Suddenlink was slightly faster in reality in our 2022 tests. WOW! Cyberspace only had a measured throughput of 26.7Mbps, even so had a higher satisfaction rating (vii.3) than Spectrum and Optimum Online, which were measured to be nigh 50 per centum faster on average. (Annotation over again, these two studies did not cover the same time periods).

One reason Fios may have topped Suddenlink is reliability. Fios has a satisfaction with reliability rating of eight.4, the all-time result in our survey, whereas Suddenlink only rated 7.6, which was fourth all-time and substantially behind Fios.

It was an interesting twelvemonth for Verizon Fios' support services. The ISP had the top ratings for satisfaction with customer service (six.9), technical back up (6.eight), and repairs (7.six). The customer service and repairs ratings are big bumps upwards from last yr when the company rated half dozen.ii and 6.9 in these categories, respectively. Notwithstanding, satisfaction with technical back up ticked down more than half a point from last year's vii.iv.

Very impressively, only eight percent of RCN customers reported needing repairs this past yr compared to the industry average of 23 percent. WOW! Net (thirteen percent), Suddenlink (14 percent), and Verizon Fios (17 per centum) were the only other companies with rates under xx percentage.

WINNER: INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS

Readers' Choice 2022 Award Verizon Fios
Year in and twelvemonth out, no ISP'due south customers are more satisfied with their Internet access provider than Verizon Fios'southward customers. This marks the thirteenth directly year the ISP has won our PCMag Readers' Choice Honour.

Related Story See all of our survey results for ISPs.