In the midst of Triple Crown season, the horse racing metaphors come easy when talking broadband. Eighteen ISPs showed up at our survey starting gates for 2017, but two were in a class of their own, leaving all the rest in their dust. Those two ISPs, RCN and Verizon FiOS, are neck-and-neck to the finish line, and we decided to hand each of them a Readers' Choice award (again). This is the third straight year RCN has won the Readers' Choice Award. For Verizon FIOS, it's a record-setting twelfth year as a winner. ...

RCN provides cable and fiber connections in select areas, and recently purchased Grande Communications and Wave Broadband to become the nation's sixth largest ISP. Verizon FIOS—not to be confused with other Verizon-branded options like wireless and DSL—is a fiber-to-the-home service.

Both finished with identical overall satisfaction ratings of 8.1 on our scale from 0 (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied). This is down a bit from last year when both had ratings of 8.4. On the other hand, the next closest finisher was WOW! Internet, which only rated a 7.2 this year, down from 8.3—and a Readers' Choice award—last year. RCN bested Verizon and the rest of the competition in likelihood to recommend, a key measure of customer loyalty. RCN received an 8.2; Verizon FIOS was just behind at 8.0, while Frontier (3.6) and Windstream (3.9) finished under 4.0.That likelihood to recommend rating is also used to calculate the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures overall how customer feel about a brand; this year, RCN, Verizon FIOS, and WOW were the only three to even get positive numbers—as in, every single other ISP in our survey had so many detractors, their scores were less than zero. Even RCN's 37 percent NPS isn't much to trumpet and is well down from last year's 49 percent.

Consumers pay a lot of money for broadband and most feel it's way too much. RCN received the highest rating for satisfaction with fees. Even at 6.9, there's certainly room for improvement but it's far better than anyone else. WOW came in second on satisfaction with fees with a 6.0. Satisfaction with fees is Verizon FIOS's main Achilles heel. The ISP rated only 5.4 on this measure. Still, that's better than the 11 ISPs that rated below 5.0. Optimum Online was at the back with a dismal 4.2.

Verizon FIOS' strength has always been its speed and reliability and this year is no different. The ISP had the best marks for satisfaction with speed (8.0) and reliability (8.4). RCN also posted the second best ratings in those areas (each at 7.9). Respondents who needed technical help or repair work on their connection gave Verizon FIOS the best ratings for satisfaction with technical support (7.4) and satisfaction with repairs (6.9). RCN was 0.1 points behind on both these measures and rated best for non-technical customer service (7.3), a full furlong ahead of all the other ISPs. Not only were RCN's technical services well regarded, the ISP also had the lowest percentage of respondents needing technical support (18 percent, tied with Verizon Wireless) and repairs (6 percent).