Broadband ISP Awards

The most popular broadband user community in the U.S. has given awards to the best ISPs in the nation.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 1, 2004]

Last week, popular user community Broadband Reports (BBR) issued awards to the top-rated broadband ISPs in the U.S. The awards are divided into three categories, Gold, Silver, and Bronze, representing three levels of overall service quality.

Quality of service is determined by end users, who review ISPs based on their experience. In order to qualify for an award, an ISP must have at least 10 reviews (as noted in the FAQ).

There is no limit to the number of BBR Gold awards, site founder Justin Beech confirmed in an e-mail. Any ISP that has maintained a rating of 80 percent or higher over the past six months on the site's review summary page (The Good, Bad, Ugly charts) qualifies for BBR Gold (70 percent gets an ISP BBR Silver and 60 percent gets an ISP BBR Bronze).

If the bar is raised, and broadband ISPs start doing much better than they have in the past, BBR will consider adding a BBR Platinum award.

The awards are continuous, not annual, Beech writes. They are awarded every week, and if an ISP starts angering its users, the response will be swift. "They are withdrawn the moment the math doesn't work out."

Beech hopes that the awards will help users find good ISPs. "I think a number of ISPs deserve recognition for persistent efforts to improve service in the face of some pretty ugly customer feedback at times. It also helps people who stumble on an ISP listing or review on the site to recognize more quickly that the ISP is not completely fly by night."

Inaugural BBR Gold award winners were: Sonic.net, DSL Extreme, Optimum Online, TransEdge, Earthlink Cable Modem Service, WOW Internet and Cable (a.k.a Wide Open West), and DLS Internet Services.

Beech hopes that service will continue to improve, and had a common negative experience recently. He writes, "it would be nice if ISPs were more honest when it came to price reductions, plan changes, and contract renewals. Customers should not have to call their ISP to find out that their product has gone down in price and is now available at a lower price, albeit if they sign up for another 12 months (this was my experience this week)."

Beech thinks that the next step is adding services. He says ISPs should be able to strike deals with services like Netflix so that Netflix charges would be added to the monthly ISP bill. "People would subscribe to a lot more premium services on the net if paying (and ceasing) were as easy as bringing up their ISP control panel and checking/unchecking a box. Everyone wins."

ISPs are paying more and more attention to their ratings at BBR, and to the active user forums there. Beech writes that for ISPs who have dedicated, paid support staff participating in forums, he is considering having one forum for interaction with the support staff and a separate forum for general chat. He writes that would give everyone "the best of both worlds without moderation arguments."

BBR also hopes to improve another popular site feature, the broadband link speed test. Beech writes, "we'd like to roll out an improved and more reliable (Java in Explorer browsers is still flaky) version of that that may also attract additional ISPs to use it."

If you work at an ISP, and you have not heard of BBR, visit the site now. If you work at an ISP that just earned a BBR Gold award, well, keep up the good work! Congratulations!

— End