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National ISPs Rank Highest

There may be more ISPs in your area than cereals in the supermarket, but providers come in only three flavors: national, regional, and local. National ISPs, naturally enough, cover virtually the entire country with their networks of dial-up nodes. Connection points typically run in the hundreds, if not the thousands. This strength in numbers means that no matter where you are, you can probably connect through a local phone call (though rural locations continue to suffer a shortage of connection options). Frequent travelers benefit most by going with a national like AOL or AT&T WorldNet, but nationals have other advantages, too. Of the five ISPs our poll takers rated highest for overall satisfaction, four are nationals.

Regional providers usually cover several states, just as the Baby Bells do for telephone service. In fact, the primary regional ISPs arethe Baby Bells, including Ameritech, BellSouth, and Qwest (formerly U.S. West). Regionals offer some of the advantages of nationals--in particular, widespread dial-up--but their biggest advantage is extensive DSL service, typically more widespread than even national ISPs offer. All six regional ISPs we covered offer DSL connections, and 10 percent of survey respondents who were personally involved in selecting their ISP and who use a regional service connect via DSL.

Local ISPs tie users to distinct locales--access numbers rarely exist outside of town. In addition, according to our poll, locals charge an average of $2.20 more per month than the nationals. Their selling point? Better, more personalized support: As a group, local ISPs beat nearly all the national and regional providers on that score in our poll.

Eventually, broadband could take an even bigger bite out of the locals' market share. "Local providers aren't losing a significant chunk of the market to broadband [providers]...yet," says Jupiter's Wigder. "But going forward [broadband access] is going to be a bigger part of the market." Local ISPs, which generally lag behind regionals and nationals in fast access, may have trouble matching the larger companies in providing broadband-specific content like audio and video.

High Speed Ahead

There's no such thing as a too-fast connection. Nearly three-fourths of respondents to our survey now use a 56-kbps modem to connect to the Internet--30 percent more than in 1999, when one in five still used a 33.6-kbps or slower modem. But users are still not satisfied with the speed of their connection. Over 40 percent say that they're likely to change ISPs or to upgrade to a faster Internet connection in the next 12 months. The rest say that they won't upgrade because of the increased cost, or because DSL or cable isn't yet available in their area.

The demand for more speed is constant because of flaky phone lines, heavy-on-multimedia Web pages, and plain old impatience. Performance is customers' number one priority when scouting for an ISP, our survey indicates. Yet only half of our respondents say they're satisfied with what they get. Lowest on the speed ladder: AOL and Prodigy, with just a third of users giving them a thumbs-up. But that doesn't stop millions, including George LeMien of Bethel, Connecticut, from using AOL. "I like [AOL's] ease of use, especially how it helps guide me around the Net," LeMien explains.

When Visual Networks conducted some real-world tests--timing how long it took to retrieve thousands of Web pages, plus measuring connection success rates, time to log in, and other gauges--the top performers were clear. Of the ISPs we reviewed, only AT&T WorldNet and BellSouth received Outstanding marks in overall performance. Concentric, GTE, and Quest earned Good ratings, while seven providers--Ameritech, AOL, Bell Atlantic, CompuServe, EarthLink/MindSpring, JunoWeb, and Southwestern Bell--pulled Fair scores. MSN and Pacific Bell staggered in with Poor grades.

AOL and CompuServe's Fair ratings come with a catch. Each uses a proprietary compression scheme to reduce Web images' file sizes so they can be downloaded more quickly (but at the expense of image quality). As a result, AOL and CompuServe lead all ISPs in Visual Networks' Web page time trials. However, they aren't apples-to-apples tests--the other ISPs were ranked on their ability to download pages with a larger total file size (the company doesn't test file download speeds). The proof: AOL came in dead last in average throughput (the amount of data it could download per second), and CompuServe did only a hair better. This may not matter to some users, though. "If you just surf," says Visual Networks' Steve Slater, "AOL's great."

Dial 911 for Broadband

Though some ISPs provide fast dial-up service, many modem users are getting antsy for broadband services. Already, one in six respondents to our survey connects to the Net via those services. "There's no comparison between the two [analog and broadband] when it comes to speed," says Preston Ward, of Irvine, California. Ward switched to a cable connection almost two years ago, and won't go back even though his monthly fee is now twice what EarthLink charged him for dial-up access.

"It's definitely worth the money," says Joe Anderson, of Marietta, Georgia, a financial analyst and recent convert to cable-based Net access. "I'm disabled, and my outside world is the Internet."

CompuServe and MSN don't offer DSL or cable access, though both say they're considering offering faster access next year. Other major players, such as AOL and EarthLink, currently provide broadband service only to limited markets. Check with your current ISP about its broadband offerings (or plans to roll them out), but don't hesitate to switch providers to get faster service. "I kept my old ISP for about a month after I'd signed up with AT&T's @Home just to be on the safe side," says Kay Cahill, an independent salesperson in Great Falls, Montana. "But I was really happy with @Home, so I dropped my local ISP."