ISP questions

I’m moving in with my SO next month, so I’m in the process of finding an internet service provider as he doesn’t currently have one. I’ve never done this before, so I was hoping to get some opinions from the doper community.

It seems that the only two big ISPs in our area are Comcast and Verizon. I’d rather not go with Comcast, as I’ve never heard of anyone having a good experience with them. Verizon Fios sounds good, but I’d pretty much have to go with a TV/internet/phone bundle, as the cost for just internet is just a few dollars shy of the bundle price (and for some bundle configurations, it’s an extra $5/month to not have TV and phone :dubious:) If anyone has some suggestions for a small ISP that serves central/northern NJ, I’d love to hear them.

I’d also like some opinions on internet speeds: how fast is your home internet, and are you happy with it? Do you think 15/5 mbps is fine for a casual use (web browsing, streaming video, netflix, etc.) or is it really worth it to bump up to 50/25 mbps?

Any experiences or opinions you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Good service can be had from Comcast, though I did have to pester them to actually send a guy here rather than them continue failing at fixing the problem from their end.

There is no way we’re going with Verizon Fios with all the trouble some neighbors had with their DSL. Seems like they had me over there once a week getting it to work again; they switched to Comcast as soon as their Verizon contract was up.

FiOS is an excellent product. It is completely unrelated to DSL (which works over the copper POTS infrastructure.) FiOS is all-fiber, just like oat bran.

FiOS is some of the fastest internet you can get. 15 is fine. 50 is very fast – great if you download a lot, but otherwise unnecessary. 15 will easily stream Netflix.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I might have to give Comcast another look, and it’s good to know that FiOS is well liked also. I just wish there were other options in my area, which is why I’d be especially interested in hearing about experiences with small ISPs.