Highest-rated internet providers in Boston
EarthLink took the lead for overall satisfaction in our 2020 customer satisfaction survey. It performed excellently in most categories, taking top spots for installation, reliability, and price.
Verizon and Xfinity also got top rankings in our survey. Verizon took second place overall, and Xfinity took fifth place. They both beat out EarthLink when it comes to speed and ranked in the top five near EarthLink in several other categories.
RCN didn’t perform as well as in years past, falling to the lower end of the rankings for overall satisfaction, speed, installation, and reliability. HughesNet received middle rankings in most categories.
Fastest internet service providers in Boston
Xfinity offers internet at speeds up to 1000 Mbps
RCN offers internet at speeds up to 1000 Mbps
Atlantic Broadband offers internet at speeds up to 1000 Mbps
Verizon offers internet at speeds up to 940 Mbps
You can find internet speeds ranging from 7 Mbps to 1,000 Mbps throughout Boston. Over 98% of the city has access to gigabit internet speeds, which is great for households with a lot of heavy internet users since no one has to fight over bandwidth.
Most people don’t need to pony up for gigabit speeds though. You can still get away with multiple connected devices, gaming, and HD streaming with speed plans upwards of 100 Mbps. 1,000 Mbps is overkill for most people, especially if you don’t want to spend a fortune on internet service.
One thing to take note of with Boston ISPs are the upload speeds. While several providers have gigabit internet download speeds, most give you much slower upload speeds. So if you’re doing a lot of cloud computing or video uploading, you might want to go with Verizon Fios, which has much faster upload speeds than other providers.