I work for an ISP, we have 10 second to 3 minutes hold times before you’re speaking to a real rep, we have had downtime 5 times since I started working for them 4 years ago for maintenance (upgrading hardware to support larger bandwidth in different areas), we sell 1Gbps symmetrical speeds with unlimited data for $50/mo, we have 50k customers (in a specific area) and 5 customer service reps. Customer service quality is definitely important, but providing a service with minimal issues and great prices, that’s why the ISP I work for can get away with such a minimum amount of representatives and continue to get a 4.7 star rating on Google as an ISP.
It’s fun working for a company like this because you get to see how 50k customers paying for 1Gbps only use 70-85Gbps at any given time on average lol, people think they need a lot of bandwidth when in reality they just need a better router for their local network’s bandwidth. WiFi hasn’t been a great tech so far honestly, Wi-Fi 6 made a lot of improvements, maybe with WiFi7/8 that changes though. Big name consumer routers like Netgear have been dropping the ball with quality for years, but they still rake in the cash because at one point they made really great hardware.
I’ve learned a lot about networking because of this job, and it’s given me a really great perspective of how awful Comcast/Xfinity/spectrum and CenturyLink/QuantumFiber really are, how much they try to get in the pockets of the people who make the decisions for infrastructure in our cities, there were so many hate ads against the ISP I work for during an election season all paid for by Comcast and CenturyLink.
Anyways, customer service is great, but quality of service is much more important. Having both is a win all around.
Seriously, I’m in Utah so this isn’t a thing out there, but thank you, I’m going to share this, and maybe, hopefully, we will become Sonic’s competition some day <3 this ISP looks like the whole entire package and what I dream the ISP I am currently with becomes one day.
We offer everything Sonic does, Internet up to 10Gbps symmetrical ($200/mo which is competitive in it market), VoIP, TV, WiFi router rentals, but it’s different than how Sonic is doing it. I wrote out a bunch of stuff, but afterwards I decided I may have started to reveal too much and it may become too easy to understand who I work for and my position… Long story short, you’re a lucky bunch out there, Sonic seems fantastic and thank you for sharing this with me/the community.