Best Internet Providers in Annapolis, Maryland – CNET
Posted on September 3, 2023
Best Internet Providers in Annapolis, Maryland - CNET
When I last visited Annapolis, its internet service providers were far from my mind. I was preoccupied with the area’s renowned crab cakes. But residents of this historic city on the Chesapeake Bay have a handful of broadband options. The area is dominated by two nationally known brands, cable provider Xfinity and DSL/fiber provider Verizon. You can find a few other choices, including 5G home internet and cheaper cable internet plans from Astound Broadband, but most area households will be choosing between the two major players.
What is the best overall internet in Annapolis?
Verizon Fios is CNET’s pick for the best overall internet provider in Annapolis. It’s got the distinct advantage of being the only extensive fiber internet provider in the area. Additionally, it boasts straightforward pricing, symmetrical speeds and high customer satisfaction ratings. CNET examines customer service, speed, pricing and overall value before recommending the best broadband in your area.
Your ISP choices will vary depending on your location, but most in the area are capable of delivering gigabit speeds. All prices listed on this page reflect available discounts for setting up paperless billing. If you decide not to go with automatic monthly payments, your price will be higher.
Best internet options in Annapolis
Our general rule of thumb when it comes to home internet connection types is that fiber rules. It’s the most reliable form of broadband and is less prone to outages or slowdowns due to network congestion. That’s why Verizon Fios is head of the class in Annapolis. But if you can’t get fiber at your house, all is not lost. You can lean on Xfinity’s superior range of plan selections, Astound Broadband’s cheap promo prices or 5G home internet from Verizon and T-Mobile.
Note: The prices, speeds and features detailed in the article text may differ from those listed in the product detail cards, representing providers’ national offerings. Your particular internet service options — including prices and speeds — depend on your address and may differ from those detailed here.
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Price range $50 – $120 per month Speed range 300 – 2,000Mbps Connection Fiber Key Info Unlimited data, no contracts, free equipment with gig service
Verizon Fios is the company’s 100% fiber-optic internet service. Expect straightforward pricing, symmetrical download and upload speeds and decent perks (including a free season of NFL Sunday Ticket for subscribers to the company’s gigabit plan).
Availability: While Verizon covers 95% of households in Annapolis, according to the Federal Communications Commission, not all of that is Verizon Fios. Some pockets of Annapolis will have to deal with Verizon’s older DSL technology. If that’s the case, turn to Xfinity.
Plans and pricing: Verizon Fios features three plan options. The cheapest plan offers 300 megabits per second download and upload speed for $50 per month. The top, 1-gig plan (940/880Mbps) costs $90 monthly. In the middle is a 500Mbps plan for $70 per month. There’s a two- to four-year price guarantee (depending on your selected tier), and customers with select mobile plans can trim $25 off their monthly bill.
Fees and service details: Verizon Fios keeps things pretty simple for customers. You get unlimited data and no annual contracts or equipment fees. Unsurprisingly, Verizon Fios took the top spot in the East region of the J.D. Power ISP satisfaction survey.
Price range $20 – $80 per month Speed range 100 – 1,200Mbps Connection Cable Key Info Unlimited data, low promo prices, no contracts
You’ll have a harder time finding better promotional rates anywhere in the country, let alone Annapolis, than with Astound Broadband. Its cheapest plan at $25 monthly will net you download speeds of 300Mbps. That’s a nifty rate of 8 cents per Mbps for the company’s most affordable tier. Even better? Astound’s fastest plan of 1,200Mbps has a $60 per month price tag, which equates to 5 cents per Mbps. That’s great value.
Availability: The biggest detriment to Astound is it’s not widely available in much of Annapolis. You’ll need to cross the Blue Star Memorial Highway to the northern area of town and into Arnold and Cape Saint Claire.
Plans and pricing: Astound Broadband offers four different plan options. The cheapest is 300Mbps for $25 per month, and the fastest is 1,200Mbps for $60 monthly. The two middle tiers are 600Mbps for $40 per month and a gigabit plan (940Mbps) for $50 monthly.
Fees and service details: Though Astound Broadband includes a modem rental in its monthly prices, it does charge an additional $13 per month for what it calls a “Network Access and Maintenance Fee.” That’s not a tax. It’s a provider-specific fee and certainly takes a bite out of its otherwise stellar prices.
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Price range $50 per month ($30 for eligible mobile customers) Speed range 72 – 245Mbps Connection Fixed wireless Key Info Unlimited data, equipment included, no contracts, no additional fees
If your address isn’t eligible for Verizon Fios, or perhaps you’re simply looking to trim your broadband costs (and you can’t get Astound Broadband), you might be a good candidate for giving T-Mobile Home Internet a test drive. You don’t even have to part with your current ISP. You can try out T-Mobile’s home internet service without commitment, on a 15-day “worry-free” trial. Also, you can get a decent discount if you’re a T-Mobile phone customer.
Availability: T-Mobile’s coverage map highlights dense coverage of its 5G Ultra Capacity network across most of Annapolis. Just over 60% of households in the area should be able to get T-Mobile’s home internet service. That said, you’ll still need to plug your address into the T-Mobile eligibility site to see if there’s an open slot in your area.
Plans and pricing: T-Mobile Home Internet keeps it simple with one plan and one plan only. It delivers download speeds of 72-245Mbps for $50 per month. If you bundle the service with an eligible phone plan, you could bring your home internet bill down to $30 monthly.
Fees and service details: There are no contracts, data caps or equipment fees, and you get a price-lock guarantee for as long as you remain a customer. However, there is a $35 service fee at activation.
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Price range $20 – $300 per month Speed range 75 – 6,000Mbps Connection Cable Key Info Data caps on some plans, lots of plan options, solid customer satisfaction numbers
Other than satellite internet, which is available to 100% of Annapolis residents, Comcast’s Xfinity is the most ubiquitous home internet service in the area. Why is that important? For starters, it makes it easy to transfer services when you have to move to a new apartment or you buy a house in a different part of town. It also means you know what you’ll get: a wide variety of plan options that’ll make it easier to find the best option for your home.
Availability: Xfinity’s cable internet connections are available to 99% of Annapolis households, per the FCC. Basically, if you live in the city, you can get Xfinity Internet.
Plans and pricing: Xfinity’s plans and pricing can be difficult to digest… and we’re professionals. Xfinity’s cheapest plan is its Connect More tier (200Mbps) at $25 per month. That requires no contract, but after 12 months, the price jumps to $84 per month. The fastest speed you can get is the Gigabit Extra plan (1,200Mbps), which costs $80 monthly and comes with a one-year contract. That price holds for three years before it goes up to $104 per month. That also comes with a perk of Peacock Premium. In between the two, you have the Fast plan (400Mbps) for $35 per month, Superfast (800Mbps) for $60 monthly and Gigabit (1,000Mbps) for $70 per month.
Fees and service details: The good news for Annapolis residents is there are no data caps with Xfinity’s home internet service. Not so good? Some plans require contracts for you to get the lowest price. Also, depending on your chosen plan, the price will increase after one to three years. Finally, you’ll need to add $15 monthly to your bill for the equipment rental, though you can skip that if you have your own equipment.
All available Annapolis residential internet providers
Though Annapolis could be seen as mainly a clash between Xfinity versus Verizon Fios, there are a few other options beyond the two others — Astound Broadband and T-Mobile Home Internet — we highlighted above.
Verizon 5G Home Internet: As we mentioned earlier, not all Annapolis residents have access to Verizon Fios, the company’s fiber-optic internet service. Verizon also supplies broadband in the area via its 5G home internet service. It closely rivals T-Mobile and, in some cases, betters it. While Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband coverage isn’t as widespread as T-Mobile’s in the area, Verizon 5G Home Internet does offer potentially higher speeds on the top end: downloads of up to 1,000Mbps are available with its $70-per-month 5G Home Plus plan in some areas. The basic 5G Home plan is $50 monthly for average speeds between 50-300Mbps. If you have an eligible 5G mobile plan, you can knock the price down to $35 per month (or $45 monthly for the 5G Home Plus plan).
Satellite internet: Folks in Annapolis should be adequately covered, per the FCC, but if you find yourself without internet options, you can always turn to satellite internet from Starlink, Viasat or HughesNet. Do we recommend it? Not when you have other ways of getting online. Satellite internet is notoriously laggy, expensive and requires two-year contract commitments, though Elon Musk’s Starlink nixes the contracts.
Richard T. Nowitz/Getty Images
Annapolis broadband at a glance
Verizon Fios is our pick for the best internet provider in Annapolis, but residents have some decent options. Xfinity covers the area to the tune of 99% coverage, so your plan options won’t be lacking. However, if you want to save money, Verizon and T-Mobile offer discounts if you bundle home internet service with certain phone plans. Finally, households in the northern portion of Annapolis can turn to Astound Broadband for the area’s best cheap internet rates.
Pricing info on Annapolis home internet service
The average starting rate for internet service in Annapolis is a decent $40 per month. That’s slightly cheaper than its Maryland neighbor of Baltimore, which rings in at an average starting price of $41 monthly. Even more impressive is the cheapest rate of $25 per month, shared by Xfinity and Astound, which comes with decent download speeds of 200 and 300Mbps, respectively. Comparatively, one of Baltimore’s cheapest providers, Port Networks, features maximum download speeds of 25Mbps.
Cheap internet options in the Annapolis region
I just mentioned that Astound and Xfinity offer monthly broadband plans for $25. Xfinity also has a $35 monthly plan that’ll get you 400Mbps, and Astound offers a 600Mbps tier for $40 per month. Let’s not forget that while T-Mobile Home Internet and Verizon 5G Home Internet start at $50 per month, both offer discounts to eligible mobile plan customers that’ll take those monthly costs down to $30 and $35 monthly.
Additionally, low-income households can apply for the federal Affordable Connectivity Program. If you’re eligible, you can get $30 ($75 on tribal lands) off your monthly internet bill. That means you could get the cheapest Xfinity and Astound internet plans for free.
Recent Ookla speed test data shows Annapolis with median download speeds around 223Mbps. That’s not bad. For context, Baltimore notched an average of 172Mbps and the state of Maryland averages 208Mbps. Also, FCC broadband data for Annapolis shows that 99.6% of Annapolis households can access broadband speeds of 250Mbps down and 3Mbps up. Again, that’s slightly higher than the rest of the state at 96%.
Fastest internet providers in Annapolis
While decent speeds can be found in Annapolis, residents won’t find some of the snazzy, multi-gig internet plans like you’ll find in Google Fiber cities, for example. The top speed in the area is just over a gigabit, at 1,2000Mbps, which you’ll find with Astound Broadband and Xfinity. Both of those plans are via cable internet connections. Verizon Fios’ top speed (940Mbps) doesn’t match them, but as a fiber connection, its upload speed of 880Mbps runs laps around the 20 and 35Mbps upload speeds of its competitors. That makes a huge difference for all you remote workers and gamers out there.
What’s the final word on internet providers in Annapolis?
In Annapolis, our first recommendation is to look to Verizon Fios. But if those symmetrical fiber speeds aren’t available at your address, you can still get plenty of pep from the cable connections of Xfinity and Astound Broadband. If you don’t have multiple users at home, consider T-Mobile and Verizon as 5G home internet alternatives, especially if you can bundle them with an eligible cellphone plan for a deeper discount.
How CNET chose the best internet providers in Annapolis
Internet service providers are numerous and regional. Unlike with the latest smartphone, laptop, router or kitchen tool, it’s impractical to personally test every ISP in a given city. So what’s our approach? We start by researching the pricing, availability and speed information, drawing on our own historical ISP data, the provider sites and mapping information from the Federal Communications Commission at FCC.gov.
But it doesn’t end there. We go to the FCC’s website to check our data and ensure we’re considering every ISP that provides service in an area. We also input local addresses on provider websites to find specific options for residents. To evaluate how happy customers are with an ISP’s service, we look at sources including the American Customer Satisfaction Index and J.D. Power. ISP plans and prices are subject to frequent changes; all information provided is accurate as of the time of publication.
Once we have this localized information, we ask three main questions:
Does the provider offer access to reasonably fast internet speeds?
Do customers get decent value for what they’re paying?
Are customers happy with their service?
Though the answer to those questions is often layered and complex, the providers who come closest to “yes” on all three are the ones we recommend.
To explore our process in more depth, visit our how we test ISPs page.
Regarding the monthly rate, we’ve got a tie between Xfinity and Astound Broadband at $25 per month. However, Xfinity’s plan features 200Mbps while Astound’s tier tops out at 300Mbps. That means Xfinity’s offering features a cost per Mbps of nearly 13 cents, while Astound’s cheapest plan rings in at just over 8 cents. So, each has the same monthly rate, but Astound Broadband offers the better value.
Which internet provider in Annapolis offers the fastest plan?
We’ve got a tie on this one too. Both Astound Broadband and Xfinity offer plans with maximum download speeds of 1,200Mbps. However, the fastest upload speeds go to Verizon Fios, whose gigabit plan offers 880Mbps upload speed.
Yes. Verizon Fios is the biggest force in fiber home internet in Annapolis. Xfinity offers some fiber-to-the-home service, but it requires a site survey, is much more expensive than Verizon Fios and therefore an unlikely option for most in the city.
