Actually the peak hours of internet use are often between eight and ten in the evening. Consequently, assistance from the ISP should be available even outside of office hours. The other indicator reflects the frequency that a user can expect to get a busy signal while dialing in. If an ISP has many customers and few modems, its dial-in number is likely to often be busy and therefore unusable. Conversely, a low customer to modem ratio greatly reduces the odds of all the modems being busy and increases the chances that an Internet connection will be available when it is needed.
Most experts recommend that a customer to modem ratio be no higher than ten to one.
The last thing that should be used in choosing from among the available Internet providers is price. Obviously no one wants to pay exorbitantly high prices for an Internet connection, but the lowest price available should often be avoided as well. This is because the lowest priced ISP is often the one that advertises the lowest price that has the worst service record, has the worst network topology, and has the highest customer to modem ratio. Most national ISP's are charging around twenty dollars a month for unlimited access. As a rule any price much lower than this should probably be avoided, and any price much higher than this should be questioned unless a high speed connection or other special services are involved.