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Smaller ISPs Have Happier Customers, UK Based Study Says (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson, writing for BetaNews: If you have eschewed the big names and opted for a smaller ISP, you probably have a happier broadband experience. These are the findings of a report which says the big four ISPs in the UK -- BT, Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk -- are rated lower than their smaller rivals. In fact, the highest rated provider, SSE, has only been in the broadband game since 2014, with Yorkshire-based Plusnet coming in second place, says Cable.co.uk. Of the big names, TalkTalk provides broadband to 13 percent of UK internet users, yet it scored just 6.66 out of 10 and placed in ninth position. The four biggest companies accounts for 87 percent of the market, but the best performer -- Sky -- only managed to hit fifth place.
Dominant players in the market tend to recognize ability to rest on their laurels, while smaller players tend to be more aggressively trying to win business. If they fail to do that, they'd go out of business.
Basically a company with prospects for growth will, on average, do better by their customers than a company without any prospect to grow.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Yup. I love it when I have a problem with my tiny ISP; when I call them, it's the NOC that answers, and not a script monkey with a cute accent.
I'm with Zen Internet. They're cheap, they give me a static IP address, they don't mind me running a Linux server off my connection and....lord be praised....when you call technical support you immediately get to speak to an honest-to-goodness engineer. AN ACTUAL ENGINEER. Somebody who knows the difference between a web address and an IP address and doesn't ask you to turn off your firewall as part of their checklist/script. They don't supply a router when you sign up, but they seem to know the admin screens of lots of different makes and basically talked me through configuring mine over the phone. I was a Sky customer for a week once when my previous small ISP got bought out by them. Never again.
Back in college I worked tech support at the local small town ISP (San Marcos Internet, in San Marcos, TX, if anybody is wondering). It was about as two-bit of an operation as it could be. Although their transfer speeds couldn't come close to what the bigger players in town offered (TWC, Grande Communications), people absolutely LOVED us for the simple reason that we actually cared about our customers, which they found absolutely refreshing compared to the treatment they'd get from the bigger guys. We'd do things like have people bring their computers in so that we could fix all the fucked up things wrong with them (remove viruses, spyware, etc). Eventually they got scooped up by one of the bigger guys (Grande), which really pissed a lot of folks off.