Whether you’re moving to a new location or whether a few new options have appeared in your neighborhood, you should always take some time and shop around to figure out which internet service providers would work best for you. There’s a lot to consider: connection speed, connection type, monthly bills, and so on, plus many ISPs will offer a discount to new customers that will eventually go away. If you want to know which service to use, you should know both what you need and what you can get.
How Fast Should My Connection Be?
It’s always nice to have a fast connection, but not everyone makes the most of it. Many internet service providers offer different top speeds at different rates, especially fiber-based providers who can give customers up to a gigabit per second or else reduce the top speed for a reduced monthly cost. If you don’t know which speed would work best, you should figure out a few things:
- How many hours per week your household spends using the home internet connection?
- How often you use streaming services and YouTube instead of watching traditional TV and DVDs/Blu-Rays?
- Whether you work from home using the internet and whether a faster connection would let you be more effective.
Once you answer these questions, it should be clear what kind of speed would work well for you.
What’s The ISP’s Reputation?
Some internet service providers have chronically poor customer service and frequent connection problems. Others have good representatives and only drop a connection when a natural disaster hits. It used to be that you’d have to sign up with a service and only find this sort of thing out months or years later, or else you’d have to go around the neighborhood asking questions, but today you can search for online reviews and feedback to get your answers. However, be sure to look for recent reviews in your city because different locations and different times can change how an ISP behaves.
Finding the right internet service provider is all about figuring out what you want and then looking for a company that can provide it (and not just one that can promise it). Be sure to take some time to look at all your options and only sign up for one when you’re sure it’s a good fit.