Finding Local ISPs

Let's say you're in the typical scenario of having moved to a new place and are now looking for an ISP. Let's further say that you've had bad experiences with national ISPs and are looking for a local one. This can be a little tricky as doing a Web search for keywords like "ISP" or "Internet Service Provider" will pull up all sorts of irrelevant sites and a handful of national ISPs, but probably nothing useful. There are three things that can help: the first is to include your state or province name along with your other search terms, something like "Massachusetts ISP" for example. The second is to utilize something like DMOZ that includes listings by region. The third is to find the local Web site for your new town and the local Web site for the closest large city and see what ISP lists they have; they quite possibly keep an ISP directory, and maybe even have some customer feedback.