Your Internet service, whether for business or personal use, is important in many facets of your life. You don’t want to be stuck with an Internet service provider who doesn’t give you the speed or features that you expect to have. When you’re looking for an ISP, here are five things to look for.
1. Speed tiers. Most Internet service providers have different plans that allow you to access several speeds. The basic plan has the lowest download and upload speeds, while business and enterprise class plans have the fastest. You want to pick the plan that matches the type of Internet usage you typically have. You don’t want to be stuck with Internet that’s far too slow for your personal browsing or your business usage, as that leads to a frustrating experience.
2. Hassle free upgrading. If you find that your plan doesn’t meet your needs, you want to be able to upgrade without encountering downtime or having to wait a long time for a technician to come out to your home. Find out exactly what the upgrading process is before you have to choose.
3. Pricing. Pricing is paramount to any decision, so you’ll want to compare prices across several different Internet service providers before making your choice. You also want to be aware of when promotional periods end. In many cases, the Internet service provider gives you a price that only lasts for a year, then it increases after that period. Know exactly how much you’re going to be paying in the long run. You also want to be aware of pricing for overage if you have a bandwidth cap, and other related fees that aren’t apparent in the monthly service charge.
4. Customer service. It doesn’t matter if this is business or residential service, you don’t want to deal with customer service that isn’t top of the line. Make sure you find out exactly what the customer service hours are, how to get to technical support, and the methods that they offer for support. If you can find out the response times for technicians when you have problems that need direct fixing, that’s good information to find out as well.
5. Types of Internet. You want to know what type of high speed Internet that your Internet service provider has to offer. The fastest are T1 lines and fiber optic, or FIOS, lines, but the former tends to be reserved for businesses and heavy use, while the latter is not available in all areas. Other options include cable, which is the next fastest but you will find that speed suffers during prime time since the bandwidth is split between everyone in your immediate area with cable. Then there’s DSL, which goes through your phone lines, and tends to be the slowest of the high speed options.
