Internet service providers are pretty awful. It seems that most Americans agree if a recent survey is to be believed.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index has released its report for 2013 on USENET. This year is particularly interesting as ISPs have been rated for the first time. How did they do?
The survey shows that Vierzon FiOS, the company’s fiber-based wired broadband service, has a satisfaction rating of 71. From there, the scores keep getting lower and lower until it bottoms out with Comcast at a 62.
What about the other major ISPs like Time Warner Cable and ATT? Time Warner came away with a 63 while ATT scored a bit higher with a 65. The average aggregated score among all ISPs was 65.
To put this all into perspective, ISPs were one of four industries to have an average score below 70. The others were the airline, subscription telephone and social media industries. It’s really kind of sad when ISPs are lumped in with an industry that has been the subject of bad standup comedy for decades.
So, why do consumers hate their ISPs so much? USENET newsgroup posts lists the usual suspects – reliability, speed and highly monthly costs. It doesn’t help that many are also unsatisfied with the current monopolies or duopolies held by many ISPs preventing them from switching to somebody else.
There is hope, however, and that hope is Google Fiber. The ASCI says that services like Google Fiber may eventually shift ISPs to offering faster service for lower costs. It’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, but we can dream, right?
