Introduction
You are not happy with your business internet. The connection drops when you need it most, the bill creeps up without a clear reason, reaching a human takes half an afternoon, or you would not tell another business owner to sign up. If you are this unhappy, why are you still a customer?
You are not the only one asking. Across U.S. small and midsize businesses, roughly one in six is unhappy enough that they would not recommend their provider to a peer. Almost all of them stay anyway. The Recon Analytics Business Telecom Pulse survey, covering November 2025 through May 2026, shows why, and the answer splits clean by size. Among unhappy small businesses (0-19 employees), 27 percent say the single biggest reason they have not left is that there is nowhere better to go. They are trapped by geography. Among unhappy midsize businesses (20-999 employees), 16 percent stay because of their account manager. They are held by a person. One can't leave. The other doesn't want to. Neither is staying because the service got better.
The market is cracking open. AT&T and Verizon have pulled millions of existing fiber lines under better-funded owners with sharper bundles. Fiber overbuilders are wiring markets that had two choices for twenty years. Fixed wireless and Starlink-class satellite are real business connections now, not backups. This report shows you how to use that leverage: a clear read on where you stand, how the system works, and the playbook for a retention call that moves the number or a clean switch when negotiation isn't enough.
Table of Contents
- I. Executive Summary 2
- II. Are You a Detractor? The Self-Assessment 3
- III. Why Detractors Stay: The Anatomy of Stickiness 5
- IV. The ISP Landscape: How the Top Providers Serve SMBs 10
- V. What's Actually Driving Your Dissatisfaction 15
- VI. Stay or Switch: The Decision Framework 17
- VII. If You Stay: How to Negotiate With Your Current ISP 19
- VIII. If You Switch: Evaluating and Selecting a New ISP 24
- IX. Conclusion 27
- Data Provenance 28