[Discuss] business class ISP recommendations

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Speaking of ISPs...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.)

My expectation is that they will all 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/