[BBLISA] business class ISP recommendations

[Tom Metro]

This is an edited version of a post I made to BLU last week. My
apologies to those of you who already read it over there.

I'm looking to get business class Internet service for a home office. At
my location I have an "embarrassment of riches" and yet none of these
are companies I want to do business with:

Verizon Business FIOS
Comcast Business cable Internet
RCN Business cable Internet

I'd like to hear from those on the list who specially have had
experience with the business class service from these companies. (I'm
not interested in feedback on their residential offerings.)


[I didn't get many responses on BLU, but I wasn't expecting to see very
many. The business offerings from these cable companies still don't seem
to be all that popular with SOHO users. I suspect customers just don't
see enough added value to justify the premium over residential service.
(And most people don't care about things like static IPs and PTR records.)

I'd be curious to know who the top 5 last-mile ISPs are in this region
for businesses with 50 or fewer employees. (Anyone know a resource with
that sort of data?)]


My expectation is that all three will offer adequate bandwidth, and
reliability, with FIOS having a bit of an edge for having a technically
superior infrastructure. (Technically, I believe Comcast offers a Metro
Ethernet[1] service that is probably as good as or better than FIOS and
avoids the shared bandwidth typical of their cable modem infrastructure,
but it probably isn't available in the suburbs (their site says it is)
or cost effective for a home office (you have to request a quote,
implying it isn't cheap).)

1. http://business.comcast.com/ethernet/products/metro-ethernet

Similarly my expectation is that they all offer about equivalently bad
customer service.

I'm most interested to hear about customer service experiences,
especially when it comes to dealing with more complex technical matters.
Have your issues been resolved quickly and favorably? Have you
encountered finger pointing situations where they tried to shift blame
to the customer premise equipment or similar? Are they available to
resolve issues 24/7?

(I've done business with with Verizon (Business) and Comcast
(residential), and found both to be fairly poor. Comcast ranks as having
the lowest consumer satisfaction in some recent survey. Their business
facing customer service might be completely different. It does sound
like they have competent engineers, but they're trapped under
incompetent management. I've never done business RCN.)

I'm also interested in hearing of any policy issues you've encountered,
such as imposed data caps, port blocking, restrictions against running
servers, etc.

And as a bonus: does the provider offer custom PTR records with their
static IPs? do they offer IPv6? do they support BGP?

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/