Things are looking up, kind of. The American Customer Satisfaction Index has released its annual survey revealing how we really feel about our internet service providers. The good news? Numbers are trending up for the first time since 2020. The not-so-good news? ISPs are still hovering near the bottom among all US industries. They managed to do worse than the US Postal Service, social media companies and cable TV. At least this time, internet providers did better than gas stations. I guess that’s progress.
The ACSI’s Telecommunications Study for 2022-2023, which is based on over 22,000 customer interviews, shows ISPs scored a 68 rating on a zero to 100 scale, which isn’t all that exciting — until you realize it’s 6% better than 2022 and the highest score the industry has earned in over six years.
Also of note, the ACSI numbers, for the first time, distinguished between fiber providers and non-fiber providers. Fiber ISPs scored a more impressive 75 rating, while non-fiber providers notched a 66-point score, which was still two points above last year’s numbers.
The ISP with the highest individual score was AT&T Fiber, which earned an 80. That helped it leapfrog Verizon Fios, which increased from 72 to 75 points but found itself in fourth place with the new bifurcated lists. CenturyLink and Google Fiber took second and third place in the fiber internet category, respectively.
Over on the non-fiber chart, T-Mobile Home Internet, which debuted in second place on the combined chart last year, topped the list with a 73 rating, up two points from last year’s impressive showing. The 5G fixed wireless provider was also well above the 66 points scored on average for non-fiber internet providers.
The other ISPs to score above average in this category were AT&T Internet (72), Sparklight (71), Kinetic by Windstream (70) and Xfinity (68).
The provider with the lowest score among the named companies in the report was Optimum, which also had the distinction of being the only ISP whose score dropped from the previous year. It fell slightly from 59 to 58.
The ACSI broadband numbers, which show much higher ratings for fiber service than other types of internet connections, echo the findings of a recent OpenSignal Broadband Experience Report, which named Verizon Fios as the provider with the best consistency of service. That survey also named AT&T Fiber and Google Fiber (both in the top three in the ACSI survey) as the second and third-place winners.
It will be interesting to see what the latest J.D. Power survey says about the home internet industry when it releases its annual results in the fall.
