Nine additional internet providers earned favorable Overall Satisfaction Scores.
Allo Fiber, which operates in 50 cities throughout Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, and Nebraska, earned top marks for service, speed, reliability, and technical support. Shentel, a provider located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, earned a top rating for both service and technical support. Allo, C-Spire Fiber, T-Mobile, Quantum Fiber (Lumen), and Hotwire Communications all received favorable scores for value.
Metronet, which serves customers throughout much of the Midwest and South, had favorable ratings for service, speed, technical support, and reliability. Lumos, which serves areas of North and South Carolina as well as Virginia, had favorable marks for speed, reliability, and technical support. GVTC, which operates in San Antonio and the Gonzales areas of Texas, had similar scores, except it was in the top ratings tier for technical support.
Conversely, eight ISPs received low ratings.
These include two satellite internet providers: Viasat Internet and HughesNet. Others include Optimum, the service offered by Altice, which acquired Cablevision and SuddenLink a few years back; Liberty Cablevision, which serves Puerto Rico and a limited number of mainland cities; GCI, a cable company that operates mainly in Alaska; Brightspeed, which took over former CenturyLink customers in rural and suburban communities in 20 states; Breezeline, formerly Atlantic Broadband, with service in 12 states; and Mediacom, which offers internet service under the XStream brand in 22 states, mainly in the Midwest and South regions.
Traditional satellite broadband providers such as HughesNet and Viasat, which send signals from space, have traditionally fared poorly in CR’s telecom surveys. But Starlink, which employs an array of small satellites in a much lower orbit around the earth, earned favorable scores for both speed and reliability. Starlink offers faster speeds and lower latency than traditional satellite services, meaning it responds more quickly to inputs from users.
