It’s easy to fall into a lazy mental habit and say that some technologies are better than others. I know I tend to do this. It’s easy to say that fiber is better than cable technology or fixed wireless when in real life, broadband customers make this decision.

My firm does a lot of broadband surveys every year, and we find customers who are happy with most broadband technologies. I say most because I don’t think I ever found a customer who praised their cellular hotspot of high-orbit satellite service on HughesNet or Viasat. But other broadband technologies and the ISPs that deploy them have their fans.

As an example, we recently talked to a bunch of businesses in a community that buy broadband from the cable company. This is a small rural town where the cable company is still using the older DOCSIS 3.0 technology. Speed tests show download speeds at a maximum of 150 Mbps download and less than 10 Mbps upload. Most of the businesses complained about the cable company. They said that service was spotty and was sometimes good and sometimes bad. They complained about the inability to perform functions that needed upload speeds, such as using cloud software, making Zoom calls, or using VoIP.

But there were several businesses that were happy with the cable company. They said they rarely had problems and had nothing negative to say about the cable company. There are two possible reasons for this. First, the happy customers might not be using the broadband in the same way as other businesses. However, the satisfied customers included a law firm and an insurance agent, who both said they worked all day with cloud software.

There is another possible reason why these customers are happier. There is a chance that the network in their part of town performs better than other parts of the network. We tend to think of networks as ubiquitous, but that is not the case. The neighborhood with satisfied customers might have fewer customers sharing a node. It might have newer coaxial cable. It might not be configured with a lot of amplifiers. It might have a faster fiber connection feeding the node. It might have suffered fewer cable cuts over the years. It might be superior in a number of ways to the parts of the network serving the businesses that complained about service.

Fiber is not always great. I have an ISP client that built one of the first fiber BPON networks. BPON delivered 622 Mbps download and 155 Mbps upload bandwidth to share with up to 32 customers. Over time, this network got full and many PONs were completely subscribed. Before this ISP finally upgraded, the network performance grew terrible. PONs with business customers delivered terrible speeds in the daytime, and residential PONs bogged down badly in the evenings. Fiber does not automatically mean a great network – any network where there is more demand for broadband than is being delivered will see big problems and unhappy customers.

I still find business customers who are happy with DSL. They live close to the DSLAM core, and their part of the network isn’t oversubscribed. Telcos are delivering as much as 100 Mbps download speeds to selected DSL customers for a decent price.

The same goes for fixed wireless. I run across customers who hate the technology and others who love it. A lot of this difference is the underlying philosophy and customer service of the local WISP. Some WISPs  do everything right while others oversubscribe sectors, try to sell more bandwidth than is available, or try to serve customers who are too far away from the tower.

I’ve found the same with Starlink. There are customers who love the service and others who tried and dropped it. I’m already starting to see this same dichotomy with FWA cellular wireless, with customers who love it or hate it.

The bottom line is that any broadband technology or ISP that a customer likes is good for them. For a customer to remain happy for a long time requires technology that works, customer service that is responsive, and a price that customers are happy with. ISPs often build a new network and wonder why they don’t instantly get a huge penetration rate. Some of this is due to customers who don’t want to put any effort into changing ISPs – but other customers are happy with the quality, service, or price of the existing broadband.

Are there superior technologies? Some networks clearly outperform competitors in a given neighborhood. But the superior technology for any given customer is the one they choose to buy that they are satisfied with. Who am I to argue with a happy customer?