RedWine
06-24-2007, 02:36 AM
You want a faster Internet? So does IT professional Chris Hesler of Cincinnati. When his 5-megabits-per-second Road Runner broadband connection from Time Warner Cable proved too sluggish for his needs, Hesler, 22, upgraded to the company's top-of-the-line 8-mbps service. For him, the reduced latency times and 512-kilobits-per-second upload speed (up from 256 kbps) paid off.
"My roommate and I play a lot of video games, like World of Warcraft. We switched to get our latency times down a little bit on the games," says Hesler, who now has the ability to download a 1GB document in just 20 minutes.
That's fast, perhaps, but not fast enough--especially when it comes to uploads. Like many broadband users, Hesler craves more bandwidth: "I wish they'd increase the upload speed to at least a meg."
What else do PC World readers like and dislike about their Internet service providers? Our ISP survey asked more than 6400 readers to rate their home broadband providers--and this year, for the first time, their small-business and mobile service--on performance, reliability, support, and features. Some key findings:
As in last year's survey, most respondents are happy with their current ISP, though there's room for improvement. About two-thirds of home users say they're satisfied or extremely satisfied overall with their Net service. Satisfaction ratings are a bit lower among business users (see "Broadband for Business: Going Beyond E-Mail") and significantly lower for mobile broadband services .
Cablevision, Cox Communications, and Verizon (fiber) are respondents' favorite home ISPs.
(We did not receive sufficient responses about business and mobile ISPs to draw statistically significant ratings for individual carriers.)
Verizon's FiOS fiber-optics-based service is the overall home favorite, earning above-average rankings in all nine of our major categories, which include upload and download speed, reliability, tech support, and customer service, among others.
Cablevision, last year's winner, finished in a tie for second place with Cox Communications, with six above-average scores. Both cable Internet service providers earned above-average marks in speed, reliability, customer satisfaction, and other areas.
As for the low end, readers are most dissatisfied with Charter Communications, giving it below-average scores in seven of nine categories. AOL is second-worst, with six rankings in the cellar.
Cable and DSL remain the overwhelming favorites for Internet access, accounting for 84 percent of surveyed readers' connections; cable is slightly more popular in homes, while DSL has the edge at work. Dial-up use continues to slide among our readers, with only 8 percent of respondents saying that they use dial-up at home.
Fiber, satellite, power-line, and wireless services are still marginal players, used by a combined 7 percent of respondents. But that's a notable increase from last year, when only 1 percent of surveyed readers reported using these technologies.
About two-thirds of respondents get two or more services, such as phone, Internet access, and TV, from their home ISP--roughly the same proportion that reported purchasing a service bundle last year. Half of these customers pay between $90 and $150 for their bundle.
In short, the big picture is changing slowly. Internet bandwidth is improving, but the speed boost isn't reaching every city and town--not yet, anyway. In some regions of North America, superfast Net connections with download speeds of up to 30 mbps are common. But other areas, typically rural ones, remain dial-up backwaters. And like Hesler, many customers continue to experience a wide gap between upload and download speeds.
On the high end, a 30-mbps link is downright poky compared with what's on the horizon. According to a recent study by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., think tank, U.S. broadband speeds are rising, in part due to the growing use of fiber-optic connections to the home.
Verizon, for instance, is spending billions to run fiber to homes in its 30-state territory. Its FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) network could easily bring 100-mbps broadband to homes, though current service tops out at 30 mbps. Some, but not all, FiOS customers can opt to receive TV services through this big pipe, too, which enables interactivity that most cable and satellite services cannot match.
Fiber may play a role in Verizon's high customer-satisfaction score. Says Charles Spivey, 60, of Richmond, Virginia: "This thing smokes, let me tell you." A retired sheet-metal fabricator, Spivey pays $137 a month for an all-FiOS phone-TV-Internet bundle from Verizon (which also sells bundles that use a mix of technologies). Spivey says his bandwidth tests indicate that he is getting 15 mbps downstream and 8 to 10 mbps upstream.
What does he do with all that speed? He downloads some music and video, but mostly "I like to mess around with satellite photos, and the Weather Channel's site offers an interactive satellite weather map that you can zoom in on," he says.
The cable guys may eventually catch up with fiber: Comcast recently demonstrated a cable modem capable of 150-mbps downloads. The higher bandwidth, however, will be rolled out slowly and in selected areas, analysts say. And the blistering speed? "It's more of a theoretical maximum rather than what a consumer might expect to experience while surfing the Internet," says JupiterResearch broadband analyst Doug Williams.
Certainly, few (if any) home and small-business broadband users have connections that run anywhere close to 150 mbps--or 100 mbps, or even 30 mbps. Most people would be thrilled with 8 mbps.
Net connection speeds varied considerably for our survey participants. About 40 percent reported download speeds ranging from 768 kbps to 3 mbps. Broadband performance is getting better, though, as nearly 30 percent of respondents said that their advertised speed was 4 mbps or faster, up about 5 percent from last year. (Surprisingly, 20 percent of our survey respondents said that they did not know what their connection speeds were.)
"My roommate and I play a lot of video games, like World of Warcraft. We switched to get our latency times down a little bit on the games," says Hesler, who now has the ability to download a 1GB document in just 20 minutes.
That's fast, perhaps, but not fast enough--especially when it comes to uploads. Like many broadband users, Hesler craves more bandwidth: "I wish they'd increase the upload speed to at least a meg."
What else do PC World readers like and dislike about their Internet service providers? Our ISP survey asked more than 6400 readers to rate their home broadband providers--and this year, for the first time, their small-business and mobile service--on performance, reliability, support, and features. Some key findings:
As in last year's survey, most respondents are happy with their current ISP, though there's room for improvement. About two-thirds of home users say they're satisfied or extremely satisfied overall with their Net service. Satisfaction ratings are a bit lower among business users (see "Broadband for Business: Going Beyond E-Mail") and significantly lower for mobile broadband services .
Cablevision, Cox Communications, and Verizon (fiber) are respondents' favorite home ISPs.
(We did not receive sufficient responses about business and mobile ISPs to draw statistically significant ratings for individual carriers.)
Verizon's FiOS fiber-optics-based service is the overall home favorite, earning above-average rankings in all nine of our major categories, which include upload and download speed, reliability, tech support, and customer service, among others.
Cablevision, last year's winner, finished in a tie for second place with Cox Communications, with six above-average scores. Both cable Internet service providers earned above-average marks in speed, reliability, customer satisfaction, and other areas.
As for the low end, readers are most dissatisfied with Charter Communications, giving it below-average scores in seven of nine categories. AOL is second-worst, with six rankings in the cellar.
Cable and DSL remain the overwhelming favorites for Internet access, accounting for 84 percent of surveyed readers' connections; cable is slightly more popular in homes, while DSL has the edge at work. Dial-up use continues to slide among our readers, with only 8 percent of respondents saying that they use dial-up at home.
Fiber, satellite, power-line, and wireless services are still marginal players, used by a combined 7 percent of respondents. But that's a notable increase from last year, when only 1 percent of surveyed readers reported using these technologies.
About two-thirds of respondents get two or more services, such as phone, Internet access, and TV, from their home ISP--roughly the same proportion that reported purchasing a service bundle last year. Half of these customers pay between $90 and $150 for their bundle.
In short, the big picture is changing slowly. Internet bandwidth is improving, but the speed boost isn't reaching every city and town--not yet, anyway. In some regions of North America, superfast Net connections with download speeds of up to 30 mbps are common. But other areas, typically rural ones, remain dial-up backwaters. And like Hesler, many customers continue to experience a wide gap between upload and download speeds.
On the high end, a 30-mbps link is downright poky compared with what's on the horizon. According to a recent study by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., think tank, U.S. broadband speeds are rising, in part due to the growing use of fiber-optic connections to the home.
Verizon, for instance, is spending billions to run fiber to homes in its 30-state territory. Its FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) network could easily bring 100-mbps broadband to homes, though current service tops out at 30 mbps. Some, but not all, FiOS customers can opt to receive TV services through this big pipe, too, which enables interactivity that most cable and satellite services cannot match.
Fiber may play a role in Verizon's high customer-satisfaction score. Says Charles Spivey, 60, of Richmond, Virginia: "This thing smokes, let me tell you." A retired sheet-metal fabricator, Spivey pays $137 a month for an all-FiOS phone-TV-Internet bundle from Verizon (which also sells bundles that use a mix of technologies). Spivey says his bandwidth tests indicate that he is getting 15 mbps downstream and 8 to 10 mbps upstream.
What does he do with all that speed? He downloads some music and video, but mostly "I like to mess around with satellite photos, and the Weather Channel's site offers an interactive satellite weather map that you can zoom in on," he says.
The cable guys may eventually catch up with fiber: Comcast recently demonstrated a cable modem capable of 150-mbps downloads. The higher bandwidth, however, will be rolled out slowly and in selected areas, analysts say. And the blistering speed? "It's more of a theoretical maximum rather than what a consumer might expect to experience while surfing the Internet," says JupiterResearch broadband analyst Doug Williams.
Certainly, few (if any) home and small-business broadband users have connections that run anywhere close to 150 mbps--or 100 mbps, or even 30 mbps. Most people would be thrilled with 8 mbps.
Net connection speeds varied considerably for our survey participants. About 40 percent reported download speeds ranging from 768 kbps to 3 mbps. Broadband performance is getting better, though, as nearly 30 percent of respondents said that their advertised speed was 4 mbps or faster, up about 5 percent from last year. (Surprisingly, 20 percent of our survey respondents said that they did not know what their connection speeds were.)