As businesses prepare to welcome employees back into offices, they'll need to ensure that broadband speeds are as solid and fast as possible. Slowdowns are not only maddening but a killer for job productivity.
Which ISP should you be using to help keep your employees on task? You may not have much of a choice, but if you do, these are the providers our readers recommend most.
Business Choice ISPs 2021
RCN is a cable provider that dates back to the dial-up days; it was one of the first to bundle internet service with TV and phone plans for consumers. On the business side, RCN services small, medium, and enterprise-level offices with the same and more. When it comes to internet connectivity, it's second to none with PCMag readers in 2021.
RCN Business pulled off an interesting trick this year. It earned killer scores for overall satisfaction (8.7 out of 10) and likelihood to be recommended (8.5), but those were the only scores RCN received. It didn’t meet our minimum response requirement in categories like setup, cost, reliability, or ease of use to determine scores there. Lucky for RCN, overall satisfaction and likelihood to be recommended are the two ratings we always look at first to determine survey winners, so those scores carry RCN Business directly to the winner's circle.
The ISP with the highest scores in the aforementioned categories is our second-place player, Wave Broadband. Wave and RCN are both owned by holding company Astound Broadband (as is Texas-based Grande Communications), which makes Astound the sixth biggest US cable operator, albeit across three separate brands. So if you're not in an RCN Business area, you might be able to get something similar.
It's fascinating to see mobile carriers making big strides as full ISPs for business, likely by people using them for work-at-home scenarios. Sprint, which was formally absorbed by T-Mobile in April 2020, was our third-place finisher; T-Mobile was in fourth.
Fios by Verizon, the fiber-to-the-home provider, has won this survey a few times in the past, but lands in sixth place this year. (It really shines in our Readers' Choice survey, where customers have ranked it No. 1 since 2006.) Despite an 8.0 satisfaction rating for Fios, other providers are getting much higher scores these days, including Sparklight (previously Cable One).
At the bottom of the list are providers like Cox and Comcast's Xfinity, as well as Comcast Business itself. Sometimes the bigger they are, the harder it is to keep customers happy.
Full Results
The PCMag Business Choice survey for ISPs was in the field from May 3, 2021, to May 24, 2021. For more information on how our surveys are conducted, read the survey methodology.
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