PC World's ISP Service Rankings, as of June 2005

Ant writes "Broadband Reports reports a PC World article on the best and worst Internet Service Providers (ISPs). More than 6,000 PC World readers rated major providers for its speed, technical support, and more. The article also reveals which broadband and dial-up services make the grade and which fall flat."

Comments

Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[CyricZ]

Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating instead. I think it'll be more accurate, because we don't have to worry about not saying negative things about our sponsors, unlike a magazine like PC World.

So state your ISP, and rank them out of 10, with 0 being the worst and 10 being the best. Explain why they're good, and any past experiences.

Re:Let's do a Slashdot ISP rating.

[TheKidWho]

I hate you, I really really do

Anyways

9 RoadRunner. It's fast, they just doubled my download speed in the past year to 740KB/s! And it works without any problems.

Reporters report reporting on the report.

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Is this some sort of pyramid scheme? Does Microsoft donate to charity if I report that Slashdot reports that Broadband Reports reports a PC World article on the best and worst Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to someone else?

Not Much Is New

[value_added]

Karl Bode, editor of the ISP ratings Web site BroadbandReports.com (formerly known as DSLreports.com), says that even with improvements in equipment and technology, broadband installation remains problematic. ...

Gail Cafferty has first-hand experience with the problem. ... "One week after Cox sent a technician to install our service, everything died," she says. "I was sure the installation wasn't the problem. I called the tech support line and had to deal with someone who didn't understand what I was talking about, and who made me walk through everything I'd already done before getting to the next level of support," Cafferty says.

Cafferty persisted until Cox agreed to send a technician to her home, who ultimately diagnosed and corrected the problem, which turned out to be Cox's fault. A month later, Cafferty noted an $80 service charge for the house call on her bill.

I don't think this qualifies as an "installation problem" but a typical example of how any and all problems are handled. Namely, tech support isn't tech support. It's clueless computer user support.

I use SBC (only local provider) and went through a few dozen or so "Support Tickets" over the course of the first year. With each call, the voice on the other end forced you through through an identical checklist -- running Windows, running their PPPoE client, directly connnected (no NAT, firewall, proxy, etc.), resetting the modem and rebooting at every stage, etc.. If you didn't lose your temper and get to a higher level support, you'd discover that those folks weren't any more knowledgable, but were at least willing to have somebody investigate the problem (as opposed to having someone investigate me).

One day after having a line problem corrected (their fault), the technician who showed up left me with *his* card with a home 24-hour contact number, explaining to me that it's entirely possible for anyone to call the same office ("Network Operations") and talk to the same people that the field techs deal with, instead of customer service drones. Yeah, so why wasn't I told a year before?

Since then, I've upgraded to a fixed IP service (for more money, of course), and all my intermittent problems seem to have disappeared. I still have the tech's card, of course.

Worthless for the /. Reader

[eno2001]

This is a rating of the biggest ISPs and it's based on normal consumer needs, not geek needs. You'll notice that Speakeasy (the BEST DSL ISP out there) is not on the list. That's because most consumers don't need static IP. How many of you hear actually use dynamic IP? I don't. Even with dialup I only used ISPs that allowed me to have a static IP and run servers. That would probably speak for 90% of the Slashdot population.

Many of the ISPs listed in the report don't allow you to run servers either. What good is that? We've got services to provide dammit! I, for one, don't trust anyone with my e-mail but myself. I have 500 GB of space for mail with mail archived back to 1990 (from the old Cleveland Freenet days). Why on earth would I want an ISP that wouldn't let me run my own secure and reliable mail server? Same goes for DNS. When I had a static dialup account (Stratos Internet Services in Cleveland who got bought out and all customers fucked over by the shitty ISP Corecomm), I didn't run my own DNS. When Corecomm took over, I needed a DNS change made ASAP for mail. They screwed up the DNS change even though I was completely clear about what needed to be done. It also took a week for them to make the change. After that it took another week to fix the error THEY made. So I had two weeks without mail because I didn't run DNS. Never again. Now I do it all: mail, DNS, web, it's all on my systems and nothing on my ISPs systems. That way *if* I have to switch ISPs, I can carry all my data with me and just change DNS myself.

I'm sure most of you can relate and run all those services yourself for the same reason; most ISPs IT departments provide pretty poor service for the advanced user. I'm happy running everything myself. I've been doing it for seven years now and have only mysefl to blame if something stops working. Nothing better than that for incentive to keep your systems secure and up to date! This report from PC World does not address those kinds of needs because it's a consumer rag. Slashdot should do it's own survey.

Oh yeah this is OT: I *HATE* Corecom. They fucked me over in so many ways, I can't wait to tell people to NOT buy service from them. Stratos was a decent company that provided unlimited dialup for the reasonable price of $9.95. For static IP, it was $21.95. When Corecom took over, they did the following to me:

1. Stole my e-mail address that I'd had for five years at that point (used to be eno@stratos.net). They told me that when they merged the accounts from Corecom and Stratos that the user at Corecom who was eno@core.com already had the address eno@stratos.net. Talk about lazy admins!!! They fucked me over with mail and I've never forgiven them for that!
2. They took away my static IP. I was trying to hit my system from work one afternoon and wasn't getting any response. I assumed that maybe my dialup connection got futzed or something. When I got home, I found that I couldn't log in, so I called support. They told me that due to the merge I now had to use 'eno@stratos.net' as my login (even after they stole my e-mail address!). So I changed that and they reset my password. After a few tries, I was able to log in. But... lo and behold I had a different IP than the one I normally had! I called them back and asked where my static IP was. They said, "Oh. You have a standard account. You need to talk to sales to get static IP". !!!WTF???!!!! I said that I'd had a static IP for five years and they said that it's something to talk to sales about. So I did. And sales said, "You have a standard dialup account without static IP." I said, "But I'm paying $21.95 a month"! And they said, "Yeah, that's just standard unlimited dialup". Me, "What about the $9.95 rate!!!?" Them, "Huh? We've never offered that. Oh wait. You must be a Stratos customer. Yeah, those rates are gone". !!!????WTF????!!!! Them, "If you want static, you have to pay by the year and it's $360 a year. By the way, it looks like you owe us money for st