The average consumer loses over $150 a year renting a router from their ISP | Hacker News Reader

The average consumer loses over $150 a year renting a router from their ISP

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242 pointssharkweek245 comments

The average consumer may honestly be better off getting a cable tech to come out and fix their broken router than buying their own and trying to figure it each time something goes wrong (which is arguably rare, but very problematic when you have no clue).

Obviously, for the genius technical minds that browse this site, leasing a router that is just pulling basic NAT/DNS/firewall duty is a cardinal sin.

But also consider this: If someone calls me with an internet problem and they have some combo router+modem on lease from Comcast, I can just give them a quick 5 minute troubleshoot session followed by the 800 number and wish them best of luck. It's all about your perspective. $150 a year for peace of mind that the cable co (as evil and shitty as they may be) are required to ultimately repair/replace this hardware if problematic.

At the end of the day, I'd rather not have to be on the hook for an off-handed suggestion that someone should purchase their own router/modem hardware and subsequently be expected to configure/maintain it. I expect most on this site have experienced the role of providing free tech support for friends & family. Just because I would never use a leased router or modem does NOT mean this is the correct option for everyone I know.

I do not like big cable or their business practices. I simply value my time more than the $150 annual savings an arbitrary consumer may realize, considering my role in society as a technical person who is unfortunately just 1 quick phone call away. I'd much rather Comcast spend their time and money fixing everyone's internet for me. If they have to bill non-technical customers a little extra to make this possible, that's totally fine by me.

Every try to bring your own modem/router while using Comcast? Good luck. No matter what the issue is, customer support will be adamant that it's your router.

I used to work for Comcast, I have some insight into how modem activation works, and I know the troubles people with their own router go through.

Exactly this. I used to bring my own, but I'm done. Every year when summer rolled around I would have very unreliable internet. Since I had my own modem it was very hard to convince Comcast to replace the cable to the house. Finally gave up and asked them for a rental modem. When issues persisted, they came and fixed it for real.

I don't usually use a modem-router combo because they inevitably crap out in weird ways. What I usually do is buy a cable modem, then wire it into a pfSense firewall, and pull one or more wireless access points off of that. It's easy to troubleshoot and I never have problems with it. The setup I have now covers a quarter acre with a single access point.

Comcast has gotten a lot better about supporting customer equipment. They maintain a "supported device list" and as long as you buy something off that list they'll help you. Granted if you're buying your own device you should be prepared to do some minimal troubleshooting like using ping and looking at LEDs.

I once came home from a business trip to no internet. When I called Comcast I explained the troubleshooting steps I took and what the modem was reporting. They sent a tech out in 2 days to tone the line. When they couldn't get a good tone they sent a level 2 tech out to replace the line. Turns out someone had put a screw through a cable chase when they were re-siding the building while i was away.

This was my experience bringing my own Linksys separate modem and router. A couple of months ago my Internet randomly went out. The issue was something with the line. I just had to tell the lady on the phone which lights were blinking. A tech came and fixed it.

"No matter what the issue is, customer support will be adamant that it's your router."

In which case you can take your router completely out of the picture by plugging your computer directly in to Comcast's line.

Not unless you use their modem.

Years ago I was required to buy a Surfboard Motorola modem through one of the companies my apartment complex had an agreement with. I then moved and used it for a few years on Spectrum. Never had issues.

Very true. I spent 2 hours on the phone with Comcast once because I was using a DOCIS compliant, but non-Motorola Surfboard, modem. Something about the S/N didn't fit their forms, and it took me 2 levels of tech support before they could get it authorized and provisioned.

This is not correct at all. It’s Comcast’s policy to support any modem on the supported modem list. From first hand experience with half a dozen non-comcast modems, and way too many support calls and site visits to count, never once have they even suggested that I should use their modem, and they have never refused support or otherwise shown any resistance.

I’ve also never had a problem activating a modem. They ask for the MAC, model number, and sometimes S/N, then it works. The model and S/N are optional and don’t even have to be correct.

They’re a terrible company and I would not deal with them given the choice, but this isn’t one of the reasons why.

I think the "peace of mind" is analogous to appliance insurance, i.e. HVAC. When it stops working have a guy come out and I don't have to worry about it.

Personally, my hangup is that the fix for my AC might be as simple are replacing a fairly cheap component. For me, I try to take some pride in knowing how to fix my possessions and being a little self-sustained.

I pride myself on learning to fix nearly everything I can. Saves me money, and I learn. But that's partly because I have the interest in learning these things.

I do wish I could find an oscilloscope and hot air rework station for cheap though.

Define cheap? (and your requirements) Both of those could be had for ~100 USD.

I own my own modem. I tell my mom to rent Comcast’s router and modem. It’s like you said, it’s just not worth having to support it when things go wrong. Comcast is so fast to just say come in and get a new one if anything is odd, it rules out a hundred dollar piece of equipment being the problem quickly.

>The average consumer may honestly be better off getting a cable tech to come out and fix their broken router than buying their own and trying to figure it each time something goes wrong (which is arguably rare, but very problematic when you have no clue).

From my experience, the hardware the ISP provides goes wrong far more often than the modem/router I purchased. The combo units my local Comcast affiliate leases out are a mess of problems, and I know multiple people that have gotten fed up with support never fixing the issue and just accept the frequent problems.

I had similar problems until I bought my own modem and router. Even if you have to pay someone to fix the rare breakdowns, I'd still advocate bringing your own router/modem.

I find that if you tell the tech who's setting up your combo gateway-router that you're planning on using it with your own router, and so request that they set their gateway up in bridge mode (deactivating not only the routing, but also its wireless AP) then a lot of the flakiness goes away.

The gateway part on these little appliance-boxes is usually pretty solid (with any problems people experience usually being line or head-end problems); it's the router part that has all the shite code. (Remember, at least for cable Internet, all the gateways are sitting on a shared medium. If the gateway logic in the box wasn't solid, it'd be causing the ISP problems, by interfering with other customers. By the anthropic principle, the gateways that survive to be purchased+distributed by ISPs are the ones that don't cause them such problems, and therefore the ones that have robust gateway code.)

I have a Comcast router modem combo(group contract through HOA, so free for me). My advertised is 125 Mbps and I do hit close to 125 when I use many of those speed test websites.

When I set this hardware in bridge mode and try to use my own router with dd-wrt, my speeds drop to below 50 Mbps.

I could never figure out why.

What speed did you get in bridge mode with a single PC directly connected to the modem? Perhaps your router was hitting some hardware performance limit when doing NAT and everything at full speed.

No different. The speed even with ethernet never go above 50-55 mbps.

If you are already setting up your own router, it seems like a huge waste to rent just the modem from them. Setting up your own cable modem requires little more than plugging it in, and your ISP should offer support if it's one of their approved modems.

With the current regulation regime, bringing your own modem on spectrum has meant that you give up the ability to get the highest performing tiers. This despite the fact that the modems on the open market were actually better/more capable than the spectrum only modem (aka not available publicly) they were giving people for the gigabit access. (this BTW just recently changed).

Even more fun, is that they regularly refuse to provision a modem at its full capability despite your service tier. AKA you have a modem that does X, and a tier that does X, but they will only provision it for 1/2X (and not bother to tell you that). A few years ago I fought a long protracted battle with their support/escalation/etc over a few months to get my modem qualified at the higher tiers and in the end the best excuse they gave was that it was a business decision.

AKA, making me upgrade my modem for no technical reason played into their ploy for renting me one.

What company was this? Couldn't you just fake your vendor to them somehow by spoofing your mac address?

>The combo units my local Comcast affiliate leases out are a mess of problems, and I know multiple people that have gotten fed up with support never fixing the issue and just accept the frequent problems.

TW->Spectrum where I live seems to have a pretty common practice of simply taking the modem from customer 1 complaining about internet dropout/etc and giving it to customer 2 complaining about internet dropouts.

Besides the bad router hardware, in my experience with the cable companies, a large part of the problem has been signal issues going through old cables, splitters, etc. The one advantage to owning your own modem is you can select one that gives you good signal quality metrics and error reporting.

Which brings me to what I view as the fundamental issue here. The cable companies frankly don't give a crap about service quality. They _CAN_ monitor signal strength, dropped packets, signal loss, etc from their end. With that they could act proactively, like "Hey this customer's modem won't lock on 1/2 of our frequencies lets call them and send a tech to fix it".

But they don't, and really that tells me everything I need to know about those companies.

You can just call them and ask to check signal strength etc on their end.

Frankly I have better things to do with my time.

And every time you call them you have to spend half an hour of your limited time on this planet convincing them that yes, you did already try turning it off and on again...

You can, as can most readers here. I've always had fantastic luck with it. If you are kind and sound competent on the phone, they are much more inclined to roll a truck to look at the issue. If you're likewise kind and prepared when the tech shows up, they are much more inclined to actually address the issue for real rather than pretending.

Knowing already where the wire comes into your house from the splitter is a big help too.

On the converse, people I know who aren't patient on the phone, or can't get to their modem when a tech shows up, or are just plain angry complaining about the service don't get anywhere.

When my neighborhood was built out, they apparently used "the wrong cable" and it seems to be at effective EOL. Everybody I know who is nice and somewhat technical has had no problem getting it replaced. The people who get on facebook and talk about how horrible Spectrum is continue to have problems.

Your internet doesn't work? Bummer, darn...

That is the thing, long time ago I thought this would be a good trend because it give incentive for ISP to improve the Router Modem Combo, so they would have less support call to deal with ( and better customer experience ). Turns out they dont want any of that, they just want to charge you for convenience.

I actually wish ONT are standardised like DSL Modem, so anyone could bring their own ONT / Modem with a username and password. I think Germany allows consumer to choose or bring their own equipment.

I wouldn't trust my ISP with my router, but i bought my own cable modem off their approved list to avoid rental fees. However, if you look more deeply into that, it's an approved modem because the ISP does have access to full management of that hw down to fw upgrades - and to give some credit, the modem portion does seem to work seamlessly.

Ditto. Mediacom router, wifi goes out every other day (and this is common). Suddenly you are using pricey phone data instead of cheap Mediacom data. No warning till you look at the usage meter.

But with my Motorola router wifi never goes out.

I second this.

I had to reboot my ISPs hardware 1-2 times a month.

I bought my own and had to reboot it once in 12 months. The connection is slightly faster as well and much more consistent.

> The average consumer may honestly be better off getting a cable tech to come out and fix their broken router than buying their own and trying to figure it each time something goes wrong (which is arguably rare, but very problematic when you have no clue).

That may be true, but the rental fees are a shameless money-grab. From the OP:

> the average customer is paying between $12-$15 per month to rent equipment like a router and modem.

There's no consumer-friendly justification for that cost, given the hardware is cheap, has a long life, and the only kind of on-site physical service it could get is an eventual replacement. It's just a way of using small-print to sneakily raise prices for most users, without having to include it in the full, advertised monthly fee.

And on top of what you said, the rental fee has been increasing since they started the rental service. Comcast intially charged what, $4/month or something?

In addition to the equipment rental, Mediacom charges an extra fee if you want the wifi turned on. The radios are there, just turned off if you don't pay.

It first appeared on my bill as a "home network" fee 3 months after signing.

For me calling into their help desk, sitting on hold for fifteen minutes, having to go through all of the remedial "turn it off and on again" steps I've already tried for half an hour before finally getting someone to replace the stupid thing is way worse than just fixing it myself or running out to the store and picking up a new one.

Or being stuck with the one with the absolute shit WiFi that constantly crashes if you have more than 25 connections running at once or more than 5 devices because the manufacturer wanted to save $0.05 and undersized the working memory on the box and sourced the knockoff WiFi chipset with buggy drivers.

> I simply value my time more than the $150 annual savings an arbitrary consumer may realize

Even as a technical person who could shop for, and configure, and troubleshoot their own router, that's simply not how I want to spend my finite time and energy.

> Obviously, for the genius technical minds that browse this site, leasing a router that is just pulling basic NAT/DNS/firewall duty is a cardinal sin.

No it's not. I lease one not because I can't figure it out but because I have better things to do than fiddle with my Internet connection and it's cheap. Yes its a ripoff, but not a bad one when I calculate my typical time value vs what I am paying. The hardware they lease (Cox in SoCal) is not too bad. It works, isn't a symmetric NAT (why does symmetric exist?), is fast, is dual band, and IPv6 works.

Same reason I use a Mac and not a Linux laptop. Same reason I don't put a more open OS on my phone. Same reason our company pays a little more for a managed Kubernetes instance at Google instead of rolling our own on bare metal. I could go on.

We are in the age of time poverty. Ease of use wins.

When I called my ISP to switch over to my own modem they stop charging me the extra $10 a month to rent the modem but said just to keep it. It’s nothing more than a money grab.

Did you get that is writing? Because ISPs have been know to say that, and then turn around and keep charging you.

Or tell you to return it when you move/cancel in 10 years. At which point they have you over a barrel for the $$$$ they want for a piece of equipment that is basically worthless.

I would return it to the local office and get a receipt anyway.

The biggest problem with this argument is that if you live in a larger city, often times their time still equates to my time.

Anecdotally, I've had several friends take time off of work to let the repairman into their home often to reset or swap out the device. It means that they are forced to be without internet for the duration, and personally I've never had a repairman from a big cable company come within the agreed upon appointment window.

It is honestly faster, and more reliable to go to the nearest electronic store in a larger city and buy new hardware than it is to be cancelled on and wait for repairs that may or may not come.

I've bought my own router and had Comcast later claim it was theirs (because they collected the SN off it, and put it in their system, then later, lo and behold, the SN is in their system).

I've had issues, called them, they say it's likely a router issue, then when the tech arrives they HAVE NO EXTRA ROUTER, so I had to take a second time off work.

You're screwed either way, but I do feel you overstate the difficulty. Installing my own router was actually the same procedure as when they rented me a router. The "techie" part is if you don't want to install all their crappy spyware, but otherwise, it's plug in, hit a website, and press the power button when prompted, which is exactly what they had me do regardless of who owned the router.

I would agree if the quality of the leased router was at all up to scratch. I rented one from Comcast once and had endless latency issues, weird connection drops, bad wifi connections, etc. When I moved to another address (still on Comcast) I bought a cheap modem and a linksys router and haven't had any issues since. I get the point you're making -- gotta consider the maintenance burden -- but in my experience that still puts the rented modem/router at a disadvantage. And I'm no networking expert, no genius mind at work, I promise.

> The average consumer may honestly be better off getting a cable tech to come out and fix their broken router than buying their own and trying to figure it each time something goes wrong (which is arguably rare, but very problematic when you have no clue).

Maybe there is a business opportunity there. Have a service where the customer buys a "rainy day repair card", only limited to configuration / setup.

150USD is about 12,000 Rs. in India, and for that we could get quite a performant router.

I don't think I've ever had a problem with my router in my 20+ years of internet usage that wasn't fixed by 90% of the time restarting it by pulling the plug or 10% calling the ISP to let them know shit's not working.

Having worked a bit in tech support and heard some horror stories from others; it seems like the average consumer doesn't know how to restart a router, nor would they like to do it themselves.

Depends where you are, more specifically the condition of the lines. I used to live in Boston's suburbia and had Comcast/Xfinity as the only provider. Lines were old and very far away from their CO, so .. many issues. I opted for renting they $5 then $7 then $10 then $12/month cable modem so when I call for tech support they would not blame the problem on CPE.

Now I am in NYC and Spectum/TWC works great in my building (orders of magnitudes better than Comcast), I have the free cable modem but I opted out of the $5/month wi-fi and got myself a $55 ASUS AC1900 router (refurbished) and it worked just great!

My mom called me when Time Warner started charging modem rent. I looked up the supported modem list, and got one. Its connected to the same router that I have (both running OpenWRT). Neither router nor modem have ever caused any problems in the 5+ years since. They power cycle when the electric goes out for a moment every year or so.

The other point is that when they own the hardware they can do what they want with it.

one side is that comcast can make your router a public access point for their service.

another side is that recently at&t pushed out a "telemetry package" to my router that classifies all the local traffic and what kinds of applications are running.

I suspect it's even more interesting when you involve the DNS servers their router points to.

Found the cable shill... there’s literally no reason why I should still be paying $5.99 a month for a modem that was built in 2010 and hasn’t received a single update since 2014. Except for the fact fuck me, because they can.

Agree. At $dayjob, our help desk guys reported dozens of calls from people having VPN connectivity or performance issues since stary-home. But most users see great throughout.

Nearly every call was from an employee with their own cable modem or WiFi router.

Most of these devices had never been updated, and many were part of botnets. When replaced with ISP gear things just magically start to work.

Surprisingly Comcast, RCN, and even AT&T had ample supply in mid-March. CPE-as-a-service makes sense for non-technology people.

Frontier charges you a router rental fee even if you don't physically possess the router. They'll waive the fee temporarily when you decline the router, but eventually it comes back and becomes immovable. The only way to get rid of the fee (that I've ever found) is to switch to a new account in the name of another person at the same address.

F$*# Frontier, I hope they enjoy bankruptcy!

Just send them a letter knowing about their mistake.

Then wait 6 years.

Then take them to small claims or arbitration, saying "look, I let them know about this 6 years ago and they still haven't refunded me".

You should win back all those fees easily, and after 6 years it might be enough to be worth doing.

A consumer shouldn't need to take a company to court. Most consumers don't have money for that, and all I've known don't have time for that.

I think most people would go to small clams court for 150 x6 = 900$.

Have you actually tried this or do you know anybody who did this? I hear a lot of advice “just do X” but rarely the advice givers have tried it for themselves.

What happens if they decide to just pay your default judgement of $900 (or whatever it amounts to) and then ban you from being a customer of theirs for life? If they are the only broadband ISP in your area then what do you do?

They couldn’t because they’re a public utility in this situation.

Who is going to stop them? The FCC? You think Ajit Pai is going to side with the customer on anything?

So then you sue them in order to get an injunction to restore service? But that is no longer in the realm of small claims court. That means they can bring in their corporate lawyers and tie you up in court for years. Suddenly your $900 windfall turns into a massive liability you can no longer afford.

I think they'd only be a public utility with respect to phone service. For internet service, you'd probably be out of luck.

You'd want to file your claim within a "reasonable time period." Undue delay will result in the court denying your claim.

What is "reasonable" is subjective. A couple of months would likely be considered reasonable; a couple of years, probably not.

So send them the same.letter every couple of months. When you are done using frontier, go get a refund

This reminds me of that time I read about this LifeProTip: sometimes if you want to get something fixed yout should get the legal team involved instead of the support team.

The example was about some kind of elettrical switch having some wiring exposed. Letting the electric power company know about this via the usual means was unhelpful.

What was helpful was contacting the legal team via phone, let them know that the wiring was exposed and that it would have been a huuuuuuge liability if somebody got fried and after any kind of acknowledgment (even the smallest, even a simple "okay") on their side let them also know that the call was being recorded. Now the ball is in their field.

It's passive-aggressive, but (according to the story) that's what got the stuff fixed very soon.

Generally speaking, As an IT person, if somebody from the legal team comes and says "fix this issue immediately otherwise we're liable" or "shut X down immediately" then I do that. Unless somebody above me (and above my pay grade) says otherwise.

Not for long: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/us-finally-prohi...

So, how hard is this to get around for an ISP?

I've heard of a few that either charge you a modem rental fee or charge you a "self equipment support fee" that just happens to be identical to the equipment rental fee.

I rent the router/modem/telephony gateway modem from Comcast. I have set up probably hundreds of wifi networks for home users over the years, and so it might seem odd that I spend money monthly with my ISP (Comcast) for something I could easily replace for a couple hundred bucks or less. But I have reasons.

1) I work from home. When my internet goes down, everything grinds to a halt. When I call my ISP, I want their first words to be "we are having an outage" not "we can't help you because you're not using our supported hardware."

2) When the router inevitably dies, I can take it down and get another one without too much trouble on the same day.

3) It actually works. Nicely. Why would I want to screw that up and give myself one more thing to configure/tweak to death? No thanks. I have real work to do. Until this thing gets in my way, it stays.

> When I call my ISP, I want their first words to be "we are having an outage" not "we can't help you because you're not using our supported hardware."

I grew up in a Comcast house, and now live in a Time Warner apartment. Both with their own modem and router.

I have never had either ISP say "we can't help you because you're not using our hardware." This includes one time when it actually was my hardware—the modem was bad—and Time Warner sent a tech over, and I was somewhat embarrassed.

I almost don't want to post this because I don't want to give them ideas. :)

I worked for a Comcast contractor once. I've seen the ugly side of it, and don't have the time/energy to worry about it.

> When the router inevitably dies, I can take it down and get another one without too much trouble on the same day.

Which is typically more frustrating than going to a local store and buying a new one.

> It actually works. Nicely. Why would I want to screw that up and give myself one more thing to configure/tweak to death? No thanks. I have real work to do. Until this thing gets in my way, it stays.

There are plenty of routers that require minimal configuration to "just work."

> Which is typically more frustrating than going to a local store and buying a new one.

Not here. I call in, explain the troubleshooting I've already done. The rep agrees that It's Dead, marks my account. I go to the local store, hand them my old one, they hand me a new one, and I come home and plug it in. Couldn't be easier, all things considered.

>When the router inevitably dies

Is this a common occurrence for people? I literally have 0 routers/modems break on me. I upgrade them before they break, and I'm not replacing them a few years either. The router before my current router was a 802.11g router.

The primary reason my shop keeps basic routers in our stockroom is because we have plenty of customers whose equipment died. Sometimes it's ancient, sometimes it's a year or less old.

Is it common? Maybe not, and you're right there, especially not compared to some of the other stuff we sell (hard drives, oh boy). But it's definitely not unheard of.

Even if it doesn't die, customer support will claim that any problems with the internet, are with your router. That's how they keep me paying for the rental.

Yeah every $100 router+wifi+modem combo I've ever bought starts dropping connections after a couple years. I spent 3x as much money on my current setup and am having no issues with it after year 3.

In general,1 modem per year dies on me. The rep considers that normal. Now these things run hot, so one year I put a timer in there so it was only powered on when I was home and not sleeping. 6 months and 4 modems later, I decided to remove the timer.

Oh yeah. If you have a device that runs hot and you power cycle it a lot you're going to stress the heck out of the connections on the board. Every time it heats up or cools down you're putting pressure on the connectors until they eventually break.

Yep. Far better to put a small cooling fan pointing at it.

I know. But to be honest, I get the modems for free, and I thought it couldn't get much worse. A small fan costs money, is potentially noisy.

Besides it turns out there is a telnet script that tunes the automatic update to once every few minutes instead of every few milliseconds in an no sleep endless loop, which frees up a ton of CPU and lets the thing cool down. Telecom provider knew but didnt't want to change their config.

In my case, I just switched ISPs.

My first generation Apple Airport died on me a couple of years ago. Straight up just turned itself off and wouldn't power on again. Might have been a power supply failure. Since it was 802.11b and I only used it for some really old devices that only support 802.11b it wasn't a huge loss. I ended up replacing it with a Raspberry Pi running hostapd.

Comcast has a list of "supported" modems and routers. I've never had issues with those. They cost $100 ea, and I've had them for 3 years now.

Also note, if you use a comcast-provided modem, it will by default have an "xfinitywifi" network that it also broadcasts, which anyone with an xfinity account can connect to, using your bandwidth. You can opt out, but this is "one more thing to configure/tweak".

The "xfinitywifi" uses bandwidth provisioned for its use and not the bandwidth provisioned for your use.

Fair. It does not contribute to your data caps or your provisioned speed with comcast. It does still use your router channels and provides the owner with zero benefit, so I don't understand why you'd ever allow it.

Zero benefit how? As a Comcast customer I can travel all over the place and connect to WiFi at high speed as long as I simply sign in once with my device, which authorizes my MAC address.

Yeah but you'll never connect your own xfinity wifi point. Even if you use xfinity wifi there's zero reason to not turn off the feature from your home router. Tragedy of the commons, etc etc

Because you like to use xfinitywifi and would feel bad disabling it while freeloading off of those who left in on.

If there was some sort of social pledge to create a system of free public wifi networks for passers-by, I could get behind that.

But xfinity-wifi is not for the public, it's only for people who pay Comcast. You're using your own airwaves and electricity—the latter of which costs you money—to provide a paid service, but don't get to share in the profit.

I'm an xfinity customer, so I am getting the benifit of their xfinitywifi program.

If they modified their program so that accessing xfinitywifi requires using your router to host one (and it was compatable with my hardware, or they offered me theirs at no additional charge), I would sign up. As it turns out, they are offering a more generous program, where people can still get the benefits even if they opt out.

I don't know what "your own airwaves" is suppose to be. The electricity being used was already going to be used for your own use, so there is no additional cost to you.

> I don't know what "your own airwaves" is suppose to be.

Sorry, I meant it's using channels/spectrum and creating interference. Admittedly less of a concern than power IMO, since a stranger could easily broadcast their own network too—they're open airwaves.

> The electricity being used was already going to be used for your own use, so there is no additional cost to you.

But that's not true, is it? Surely, if there's someone else using my router to download and upload data, I'd expect that router is going to be using more power and increasing my electricity bill by a small amount.

It also uses your electricity.

Are you confusing "bandwidth" with "data"? Or are you using "bandwidth" to mean actual EM spectrum? If the former, then you might be wrong about parent's point and "bandwidth provisioning" isn't even possible in many cases anyway. There is a maximum bandwidth a given modem and location can support for cable, and if someone is already paying for it that's that. Other people will in fact be eating into that bandwidth. Which may or may not matter for many customers who aren't actually pushing it anyway, but it's a real thing (unless Comcast has a good enough prioritization implementation that the owner can always get 100% on demand, though even a rough cap on guests would be good enough to at least make sure the owner is never starved).

If the latter it's definitely an issue as well, a major complaint about it in congested areas is that it can take up the best channel itself.

My provider does something similar.

I don't mind, as I have a 1GBPS down / 200mbps up FTTH internet connection.

In exchange for that I can get free and safe (no dumb open network with html login pages -- it's radius login based, tls backed authentication) wifi connection almost everywhere in my city.

But I live in Europe.

Edit: oh, and the modem rent is free.

Reading this thread makes me realize it's a "normie tax". Normal people don't know how to troubleshoot network problems and require a lot of technical support (read: $$). So "rent" them a cheap router - not because they need to pay for a router - but because it's a proxy for increased technical support. It's genius because technical people will opt out of the router but also not require as much tech support. It's a way to internalize the otherwise external cost of tech support.

Change my mind. :)

My ISP (frontier) refuses to do any support unless their router is connected, I have had issues in the past where I know 100% that it is the ONT that is the issue, yet I have to connect their router to it before they will do anything or send anyone to look at the issue

The second they find out I am not using their hardware the call ends

sadly even with the extra fee, I am still paying about 30% less for Symmetric fiber than I would for a similar asymmetric connection from Comcast which is the only other provider for me

It's also a tax on people who know better but still value their time more than the satisfaction of using self-owned equipment.

I have a self-owned Docsis 3.0 cable modem now. The only reason I haven't paid out of pocket to upgrade is that modems with 2.5Gb NICs are imminent, but in the back of my mind is also the thought any issues I find will instantly be blamed on customer equipment.

I may just meet Comcast in the middle: rent a 2.5 Gb modem long enough to get it working then swap to self-owned. That shuts down any it must be your cable or equipment arguments and lets me progress to are you sure you've provisioned this thing properly?

> It's also a tax on people who know better but still value their time more than the satisfaction of using self-owned equipment.

Yes. This exactly, and that's what I was trying to get at in my comment above.

For me, it just isn't about self-satisfaction. It's just not that time-consuming to buy my own modem and router, spend a few minutes setting up the router with my preferred settings, and getting on with life.

99% of the time, if I have an issue, I just do a power cycle (same as I would do with something I was renting) and the problem is solved. In the 1% of times that it's something else, at least I have the option to look into it and possibly solve it. With a rented Comcast modem/router combo I haven't a clue what I'd be able to accomplish other than driving it back to the service center and swapping for another one.

The modem and router I'm currently using are both several years old and have required minimal tinkering. Most of that was limited to the 10-15 min of initial setup and maybe a few minutes here and there over the years forwarding a port or something.

I value my time. For that reason I bought all of my own equipment. I've had the same modem, router, switch, and AP running with only minor issues for about five years now. When something does go wrong, I can pinpoint the issue in significantly less time then I would be on hold with comcast, and when the issue is on comcast's end I can just report an outage and move on.

It doesn't hurt that in those five years I have saved...well zero dollars because I spent too much money on my equipment. I am starting to see savings though, and am happy about that.

I happily pay $150 a year to rent my router. I want nothing less than to ever think about a router. Something goes wrong the cable company deals with it. I configure nothing, I troubleshoot nothing. I love it and it's a bargain.

This sounds nice, but isn't a reality in my experience. The equipment that major ISPs give out is usually of pretty poor quality. When it does fail, you end up on the phone with support, or driving to a service center, or taking off time to meet a tech. For me that is a much larger time suck than the ~hour I spent setting up my own equipment.

My experience aligns much more with yours than the GP; it sounds like they have a much better provider than most. In my experience, ISPs use the cheapest hardware they can get and still blame the customer or give them the run around when there is an issue. Buying my own high quality modem+router has definitely saved time over the handful of times I was using a rented one.

Interestingly, my situation has been the reality in my experience.

Which ISP are you using out of curiosity? Not that I have an option other than comcast.

Comcast!

What are you doing right that I am doing so wrong?

> Reading this thread makes me realize it's a "normie tax".

If you want to look at it that way, sure.

Also you paying to have your vehicle or bike serviced is a "tax for people that don't know better".

So is paying to have plumbing and electrical done in your house, so is getting your back adjusted, so is virtually everything you pay someone else to do.

We all have our expertise, and just because we happen to be good with routers, doesn't mean we should look down on people that aren't, because chances are they've got skills far above you in some other area.

Actually, I'd do the electrical myself, but I'm not allowed to, because I'm not certified. I just need a more redundant breaker configuration. A few days ago some overboiling pot shorted out wiring in the stove (portable/plug-in 2-plate resistive), tripping the GFCI that cut power to a server on a different phase. I know what's be needed, but if anything happens, I'd be (presumed?) liable.

How about elderly landline subscribers still paying equipment lease fees for their wall-mounted rotary handsets?

https://komonews.com/news/consumer/family-discovers-deceased...

This is a sad byproduct of diminishing intergenerational housing. In years prior, the head of the house would pass off these types of responsibilities to one of their children, but now our older generation is mostly left to fend for themselves with meager help from the state.

Don’t let this happen to your parents! Take on these responsibilities. They spent years cleaning poop off your rear end, it’s the least you can do.

Have your kids ward off exploitative market behavior? How many parents open up their finances to their kids, to the point where their children may audit for odorous items?

anecote!=data, but I've rescued my parents and grandparents from exploitative ISP costs/service. Grandparents sought the help on their own, complaining that the service was subjectively crappy. Parents gladly took the help when offered.

My parents aren't old enough yet that they'd need my help with that. Well, not entirely. My mom had asked me for advice in the past when my dad was on business trips and things couldn't wait until he returned. It was rare, but not unheard of.

But I remember my mom and my aunt (her sister) doing that for their parents and having their typical loud-voice conversations in our kitchen about such things, and also my dad doing it for his parents. Not just exploitative stuff, but also things like dealing with companies (like a plumber) and administration, and later on when my grandparents got sicklier they also did most errants/shopping for/with them, took them to the doctor and so on.

My dad even ended up taking legal guardianship for my grandpa, as my grandma was considered "unfit" by the court. And later, he did the same for grandma, when she deteriorated further and it was a choice of her being under his guardianship in her own home with professional help once a day and him doing the shopping and keeping the house clean etc, or the state taking guardianship and putting her into a retirement home against her will. He went there straight from work each day for an hour or two until she passed.

I'd say it's more common than not.

I think the specificity of "Patriarch" is what is turning people off your point (in my wife's household, it was DEFINITELY the "Matriarch", if you will, who took care of finances, arrangements, contracts, etc... the well-meaning but clueless stereotypical-teacher "Patriarch" would not have been capable), but I do think it's worth pondering.

Moving from Europe to America and then Canada, I did find a distinct cultural difference about which generation gives more to which and when. As a very broad stereotype:

- In my neck of the European woods, parents gave a lot more (time, effort, investment, money, support) to kids; but were taken care of a lot more in their older days

- In America, parents gave less; I mean, still love and support their kids, but you're supposed to get a job when you're 15-16, at least partially try to support your university / get a loan, perhaps even move out at 18. In turn, while there's still obviously a relationship, parents are more independent and expect to set up their own late years.

I even found examples of a mismatch - families that would grow up in Europe (so parents would give a lot of themselves to their kids), and then end up in North America (so they "reaped less rewards", i.e. were now also expected to fend for themselves, have RRSPs, setup their retirement homes and even funerals/graves, etc). Almost a version of a "lost generation".

Thank you for the feedback. I changed it to the more accurate term “head of the household”

I know you acknowledged broad strokes, so just for the sake of context with another data point, in my current neck of the woods in Europe parents tend to provide and expect even less than most Americans/Canadians. The variance within just western Europe is somewhat surprising to me based on others I've talked to.

Absolutely; I should've made my point clearer: there exists obviously a tremendous personal, but also a significant cultural variation in which generation gives how much and when.

In the cultures I've been part of, it is so pervasive and subconscious it is completely not considered or thought about, let alone explicitly discussed; and yet, in many ways, also completely relied upon. You live your life based on certain basic assumptions on who will take care of whom, when and how much.

People feel bad about discussing them and their conscious spoken words frequently don't match their actual ingrained expectations: e.g. a person saying "Oh no I don't expect anything from my children", may not have actually lived their life, prepared, or emotionally accepted possibility that their children actually wouldn't. Similarly, a parent saying "Oh, I gave my all to my children", might be surprised to see some other parents' extent of "all". And so on.

Honestly, I only started even remotely pondering this once I had children, late in my life, after switching cultures a few times and marrying a partner from a different starting culture as well.

Poor planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

My parents threatened to kick me out on my 18th birthday. That was my big birthday "present" from them. Not soon after, I left. They made is clear and known that I wasn't wanted there, even if I was going through school.

I owe them nothing.

> They spent years cleaning poop off your rear end, it’s the least you can do.

Well.. I never asked to be born. Yet somehow I'm supposed to be shamed into helping? Hardly. It was their complete responsibility to fuck and spawn.

This is not even an option in France (and some other country I think). The ISP provide you one "box" (a router) that do the whole Internet+Phone+TV package and they refuse to support anything else.

You can refuse to use their "box", but they won't change the price of the subscription, and they will not provide any help. And since they use some weird configuration and won't tell you anything about it, good luck being able to make your router work. One guy at work actually manage to use his own router with Orange, but it was a journey, and it break regularly because Orange can just decide to change one thing whenever they want.

The only ISP that is not a full on professional ISP and let you use your own router that I know of is OVH, but they are very small compared to the very big consumer ISP.

Yeah agreed, in the UK its the same. Considering you can get basic 80/20 unlimited transfer VDSL for £20/month now (including the modem), which is not much more than the ~$15/month I've seen for the modem rental alone in the US.

My best home ISP that I had just gave you one static IP per contract and I could use any hardware I wanted. I still have the 100Mbps fiber-ethernet switch + router combo which worked flawlessly. I wish every ISP was like that :/

I thought this was common knowledge in the industry. Much like renting telephones was a rip off back in the day. I suspect most people who rent routers do it because they don't know how to set up and manage their own and not because they are making some economic choice.

Cable Sales Guy: "Do you want to rent a router?"

Customer: "WTF is a router?"

CSG: "You need one to get internet on your computer"

Customer: "I guess I'm renting a router then"

Comcast/Xfinity broadcasts their own Wi-Fi from the routers they rent to you. That is the backbone of their mobile phone service, with Sprint towers as the fallback for out of service areas. You are essentially paying (electricity/modem) for the privilege of hosting their mobile network.

As a Comcast/Xfinity customer, I don't actually have a problem with that. I need the modem/router anyway and doubt that the extra load would introduce any congestion for me. I would want them to make sure that their usage does not count as part of the rate limiting they apply to me; but since they control the router/modem, and upstream network, I assume this is something they do.

The marginal cost to me is a minimal amount in electricity. However, their policy of doing this allows them to provide me "free" (included in the cost of my internet) WiFi basically everywhere I go. The cost savings of not needing to use my more expensive cellular data easily outweighs what I am spending on the margins to support this scheme.

The only reason I don't do this is because I use my own router (and modem); so now I just freeload off of everyone who does.

The rate limiting is done via file loaded into the router. AFAIK, it can't be adjusted dynamically as phone users come in and out of your hotspot. Maybe they give you a higher rate if you have the xfinitywifi hotspot enabled, I couldn't find any info.

I will say that the public hotspot usage doesn't count toward your data cap, at least.

The xfinity hotspot is a completely separate network from yours. It has its own IP range, and it's own cable-speed configuration.

It's as if your neighbor also had WiFi running.

I spent 15 minutes looking (which was 15 more minutes than I should have spent on something that did not affect me at all) and I was unable to find out that it had its own cable-speed config. Good to know that it's not quite as parasitic as I thought.

you can easily turn that feature off

there may be reasons to do so but is the cost one of them? It is probably infinitesimally low.

It's a nice feature. I enjoy that I, as a customer, can use Wifi most anywhere. I also have the option of turning off the functionality on the device in my house using the web portal.

It's a nice feature for other people to have. For me at home personally there is zero benefit, it's a zero net side-effect at best. Definitely not something I could/ should pay for.

Basically, it's a feature Comcast offers which is paid for by the ignorance of a percentage of their customers.

CSG: "do you have mobile devices that need WiFi access?"

Customer: "sure, how else would i enjoy my new shiny internet access?"

CSG: "so the more expensive router with WiFi enabled option it is"

The article does not take into account at all that you not only rent hardware, but pay for a service (which includes testing and deployment of firmware upgrades) which you would need to do yourself. If something does not work with your own device, you're on your own. Of course, the time you spend with upgrades needs to be factored in as well. If you use the same (ISP-provided) firmware, you can ask peers/other customers in case of problems.

Also, in Germany, Vodafone configures a separate Wifi connection for "guests" (other Vodafone customers). In return, wherever you go, you can use other devices. Depending on the coverage--which is not too shabby in my neck of the woods--this is actually not all bad. With your own device, this is not an option.

same here in Czechia, it's called UPC WiFree, it should work in other countries too, but here in Prague I pretty much never need to use my mobile data, since this shared WiFi is everywhere

I've seen these dual AP setups, sounds like a great idea, but in practice the signal is weak and I pretty much would have to stay in one spot (potentially creeping out someone in the house lol) to use it properly. Mobile data is just much easier.

I guess it works for guests (but then why a separate AP? Just ask your friend for the password)

I still rent the router/modem from my ISP. Looking back over time and the amount paid it's certainly easy to see that it's been an unwise choice financially but if there was failures or other issues with it, it could have been a wise choice. Overall the cost is minimal and the amount of extra money I would get in my pocket is in the noise floor of my salary.

If my goal was to examine every aspect of my spending to be as thrifty as possible there are many other things that would provide a greater savings than this. Ultimately for this one the cost to convince if there are issues is just worth it. I suspect for many people it's the same thing.

Why would renting have been a wise choice in case of failures/issues? I'd MUCH rather run to an electronics store and have working internet in an hour, compared to dealing with the ISP, scheduling a truck roll, being available "between 9am and 8pm next Tuesday", and all that other bullshit.

Keep a spare unit around and you don't even have to go anywhere.

I'm not sure where you live but I don't need a truck roll to get a replacement it comes next day for equipment or I can go to the local office and get an exchanged. Additionally failure of the modem isn't the only thing to consider there's line issues etc... With the line terminating at their equipment there's no hassle of do you have compatible equipment, is it functioning properly etc... It's literally handled from them to the modem minus a small leg from the demark to the room it sits in. It's trivial to. Plug directly in to the demark and show that and errors/issues are on them and they fix it promptly with no finger pointing.

How is it more convenient? If a leased router or modem fails you still have to wait to get a replacement. If one you own fails you can buy a new one from a local store or online retailer. It's not like your ISP will have it replaced faster than buying a new one.

What? I just drive to the Comcast office (which happens to be closer than Target/Best Buy), hand them the modem, say “it dead”, and they give me a new one. Takes an hour with travel time.

That depends on how busy it is. I've had to sit and wait at a cable office for 30+ min just to do a simple modem exchange.

You're participating in a lottery. If you're going to rent your modem, you might as well start buying lotto tickets

Agreed.

Renting my router/modem makes sense to me too. I rent an apartment and if I had my own place, I would own my equipment as I’d want the extenders, more cat drops etc but with renting a place it’s much easier to rent the combo.

If it breaks, which it hasn’t in 3 years now, I can just swing by one of the stores and pick up a new one.

I actually had this conversation with my ISP once:

Me: "Hi I was just looking at my bill and I noticed my router rental fee went from $4 to $6 a month. Why?"

"Because that's our new fee for rentals this year"

"Yes, but you didn't send me a new router. Why does my now even older router cost more than before? It doesn't give me any more value than before, and arguably gives me less value"

"Did you want us to send you a new router?"

"No, the current one works just fine. I want to know why it costs more than before"

"Because we can"

They literally said "because we can". Sadly I wasn't recording (nor could I switch ISPs).

My only advice on which router to get is don't be cheap by buying the cheapest one at $ELECTRONIC_STORE.

I bought a sub-$100 cable modem + wifi router and used it for like 5 years. It was good enough for most things, but it could easily make it choke when doing big uploads (e.g. uploading a few gigabytes of pictures from smart phone, syncing Dropbox, streaming a video file to my Chromecast) via wifi. The wired connection was 10x-20x faster.

I eventually bought a nice-ish gaming wifi router and my upload speed immediately jumped to wired speeds. It turned out I just had crappy wifi on the cheapo wifi/router.

I have Verizon Fios. It’s generally a nice service; I pay $75/mo for near gigabit speeds (both up/down), no contract, no hidden fees. Just internet. It’s usually pretty reliable—at least, more reliable than their only competitor in this area, Comcast.

But there’s one problem: I have to fight them at every step over the router. They refuse to offer technical support of any kind if I’m not using their router, and it has to be the latest or second-latest generation. The current cost to buy that router outright? $300. Renting is cheaper because I’ll need to switch to a new model in a year. They even give me a hard time during installation—it’s not unusual for the technician to refuse to leave until they get a chance to test with an official Verizon router.

I keep a Verizon router on hand. When I need tech support—which is very rare and usually indicates a problem on their end, such as a chewed fiber line—I plug it in and call them up. I might need to do that once every 3 years; oftentimes I have to buy the latest model from them and wait for it to arrive.

Two days ago, I called about getting service in a new location. For the first time, they offered to include the router lease for free—but for how long? Would I need to start paying for it in a year? And the hassle of returning it when I don’t even plan to use it? It took some convincing to get them to remove the item from the contract—“if you don’t add it now, it will cost you $15/mo to add later.”

I guess it may be YMMV on Verizon FIOS then. When I signed up I clicked a "I have my own router" box on the website. I've been using an old RT-AC66R with zero problems. The tech who set up the ONT was a bit confused, but rolled with it. Have never paid a dime in router fees with 2+ years on Verizon.

It varies. Sometimes they're a bit confused, sometimes they just shrug it off, sometimes they give you a really hard time--especially if they're new.

I just got a text message indicating that Verizon is going to allow me to install an ONT myself, and a tech will attempt to guide me from... outside, I guess?

I got FIOS services back when they didn't charge for their router (~9 years ago). I still have it in a box in the basement if I ever need it, but I never have. Rock solid service in the 3 places I've lived.

Its another way for ISPs to mint $$ from you. My SO, was renting out router from the ISP. She is smart enough to figure out setting up the router. But the customer support folks are not very helpful, in setting up connection, if you dont rent from them. which makes it challenging for someone who is not from tech.

I guess that is a semi accurate title. I purchased my internet modem, and my router. But I spent far more than 150 to do so, and what is to stop some new technology making my equipment obsolete or unable to achieve the highest possible bandwidth available. If you rent the cable companies equipment, its their problem to deal with and honestly 10 -12 bucks per month is kinda worth it. I bought one of Comcast's recommended modems and I get almost the 1GB speed Im promised. The mesh wifi I have is better than the comcast router, but by no means perfect. I tried the prosumer ubiquity Amplifi stuff, but it constantly dropped offline. I recently moved to linksys velop and while it is good at providing wifi coverage at high speed, and is definitely more reliable than the Amplifi it still drops periodically and requires a reboot.

> some new technology making my equipment obsolete or unable to achieve the highest possible bandwidth available

Let me introduce you to the United States ISP cartel. A technology leap might happen once every 20 years. In the vast vast majority of this country you can't even get a 100Mbps+ connection so I'm definitely not worried about what - 1Gbps+ compatibility in the future?

That's one of the downsides of having a fiber connection, like AT&T - they don't allow 3rd party ones.

Fiber doesn't change the story from a technical point of view, 3rd party routers work fine and even if you just go first party there is no reason it has to be rent only (the boxes aren't expensive enough to justify the fees). If they tell you different then they are flat out lying.

I proxy only 802.1x traffic to and from from the AT&T modem and spoof my external MAC as the AT&T MAC. The AT&T router is not in the data path nor can it make any other connection beyond the 802.1x traffic (I have no IP on it's port to act as a gateway). Been working fine for over a year, performance is far better than when the data was running through their router even after disabling everything I could find.

Also there is a lot of hidden config on that router, for instance when Cloudflare announced 1.1.1.1 it wasn't reachable from my AT&T connection. Coincidentally that was the same week I swapped to my own router and when I did instantly 1.1.1.1 worked. Swapped back it didn't. So somewhere in there there were IPs and config that weren't showing in the user interface. They fixed the 1.1.1.1 issue in their routers about a month later.

True for the router, but some/all fiber service also requires an Optical Network Terminal (sometimes in your dwelling, sometimes outside). That belongs to the ISP and cannot be replaced with your own unit AFAIK.

There's no rental fee, but if it fails, you'll have to deal with the ISP to repair your service.

I think most people are referring to the modem/router combined, not just the modem. It is potentially a problem having the end customer replace the fibre ONT, as (X)GPON can be very sensitive and you could take out the whole fibre split for 32-128 customers if it starts playing up.

The ONT is a separate box and AT&T does not charge a rental fee for it so I don't think that's what's being referred to in this post about renting and routers.

That being said while on the topic yes you usually need a particular ONT for compatibility but there is no reason it would need to be a perpetual rent model or have the ISP logo on it. As for multiple connections being on a single shared line sure, that's how cable modems have operated for years without issue with consumer choice.

Verizon Fios allows it, AFAIK. The fiber terminates inside the house and converts to coax. Apparently there's an ethernet port on the fiber modem and you can skip the coax entirely if you just need ethernet.

If only AT&T did it that way. Instead, the fiber terminates at an ONT, which has an ethernet port and that connects to their router.

AT&T's network uses 802.1x authentication and the client certs are burned into ROM on the router.

The router has a crappy passthru mode where it gives your own device the external IP and sends any traffic to it, but under the hood it maintains its own (rather small capacity) NAT table for all the traffic. There's not a real bridge mode.

Some more technically inclined folks have come up with solutions like a proxy that just forwards 802.1x traffic to the router so it can respond, or rooting the AT&T box and pulling the certs out of ROM so you can use them to auth on your own network device.

Altice / Optimum Online is the worst. I signed up for gigabit. They came 3 separate times and tried to pull a fast one on me by installing a 200 mbps modem instead of a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. On the 3rd visit, I had my own Arris SB8200 ready, and had the tech install it, and take their modem back. I've spent more than 20 hours on the phone with them and they refuse to remove the modem fee. I assume they will eventually charge me for a modem I already returned. I have the work order PDF showing their modem was taken back by the tech but since they continue to bill me for the modem every month, they will probably screw me, with an unreturned modem fee, when I finally cancel service with them. I don't think there's a company in the world that I have more scorn for.

If you are on Comcast and you use a lot of data and you have a plan that is at least 300 Mbps, then it might be worth renting their modem so your can sign up for xFi Advantage.

xFi advantage is an add-on service that provides some extra features, but is only available if you rent their "xFi Advanced Gateway". These include some sort of extra security and some sort of WiFi assessment tool, which probably no one here would care about. But also included is unlimited data.

You can add unlimited data to any Comcast plan for $50/month, but xFi Advantage is $15-25/month (it seems to vary by location) plus ~$13/month for the gateway rental, so it is a net savings.

In my area, you have to be on at least a 300 Mbps plan to add xFi Advantage, but that may vary by location.

I suppose you could pay the "rental fee" yet just replace the modem/router with your own and consider the fee your "unlimited plan"?

Yes, you don’t have to use the modem you rent from them, but in my case the rental modem is more advanced than my old SB8200 because of mid-split support and a 2.5G Ethernet port.

Came here to say this... in the Bay Area, a gigabit plan with unlimited data is $120. XFi modem/WiFi router rental (XB7) with unlimited data is $25, which comes out to a total of $95.

It’s a no-brainer if you use more than 1 TB/month of data regularly and the router/modem combo you get isn’t all that bad. Supports WiFi 6 and mid-split support for better upload speeds when Comcast rolls that out. You can easily put it in bridge mode and use your existing WiFi network.

In my area the $15 per month includes the modem rental, so it’s a even better deal.

One of the top reasons to never rent, take delivery of, or use the ISP's router is that you have to return it before canceling the contract.

ISPs have physical offices.

Comcast put me through hoops cancelling in one city, so I physically returned the router + sent in a certified letter stating I wish to cancel.

If needed I could have then disputed the charge with my CC company but they took the hint and stopped billing.

I pay $8/month to rent mine, and it’s worth it. It’s a dual modem/router & works fine. Considering a nighthawk or similar would end up being the equivalent of ~24 months or so of renting the unit I have it makes sense to rent.

Now, I will say I do this intentionally because I’m renting apartments and not owning a home. Once I own a place, I’d do a setup with many more Ethernet drops and all of that but since I can’t do that (I could, but tearing it down is a real pain in the ass) renting it makes sense.

For the cable modem/bridge, here's the info for Comcast:

https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/list-of-approved-ca...

http://mydeviceinfo.xfinity.com/

I've picked up a used, supported DOCSIS 3.0 one for $20 before.

At those prices, you might want to have a cold spare, in case the main one gets zapped or dies from overheating. (I think you'll probably need to call your cable company when you swap in the spare.)

For the router and WiFi, you might want to use a model well-supported by OpenWrt:

https://openwrt.org/

When picking the router, besides one with good features like WiFi standards that are advertised by the hardware vendor, you might also look at the wiki pages for less-advertised specs, like flash space, RAM, and USB ports. OpenWrt has a large catalog of open source add-on software, and might prompt you to care very much about the less-advertised specs.

I've never had an ISP offer to sell or rent me a router, Cox did rent me a Modem before, which when I got my first apartment at 21 was more of a compromise due to limited funds than an actual choice as a broke college kid. I absolutely needed internet, but with only a $100 food budget for the month (in the best of times) I had to make every penny count and $10 could be like 5 meals if I planned it right.

When I finally got a paying gig in town I was resolved to undercut Cox and buy a better used one on Ebay so I saved where I could, I even cashed in my used plastic water bottles at one point. So when I had enough saved up I called 2 days before my next bill and I told them they could come pick up their modem as I no longer had any use for it.

They sent me a pre-paid box a week later after they tried to haggle me about keeping it for a 'loyalty customer' price.

Granted, I had to steal internet from the downstairs neighbors until the other one showed up but it still felt good finally putting COX on the receiving end of a losing deal. It was obsolete and an unreliable device (it would often shut off) they'd have to destroy, and they paid SH for the privilege.

I might still have that modem in a box somewhere, too.

Both Comcast and RCN have offered a modem/router box with their service. My roommate took them up on it. I don't pay for the bill and so I don't really care. Both the boxes were decent enough at their jobs, the RCN one seems to be struggling with wifi in 2.4ghz range currently likely because I have sixteen other networks within range.

When I first cut the cord I immediately returned the DVR and cable modem, and replaced them with firetv and my own cable modem, after a year I had saved the cost of those items. I canceled the TV service and instead got Hulu and Netflix for a fifth the cost. In the end I think I was saving $1200/yr. then they started raising my bill by $3-5 every month or two so it’s gone from a low of around $35 to around $75 now. I’m pretty sure they are not supposed to do that but NY Department of Consumer Affairs basically finds any excuse they can to not investigate complaints, I gave up after trying to complain for a couple months.

Very interesting is that when I first started streaming 4K video the cable company seemed to suspect I had started running a business or something and they would bounce my connection and change my IP 2-3 times a day. They gave up after six weeks or so and my address has been stable since.

Funny story:

5 years ago I bought my own motorola cable modem and had Comcast come out and install it in my new house.

Next month, i saw modem rental on my bill.

I call them. They insist that actually they own this equipment and are leasing it to me.

I mean, what do you even say to this?

I sent a copy of the receipt from Amazon and told them I would sue them in small claims court if they kept charging me for it. It worked, but it still blows my mind.

Comcast rental used to be more than 10 bucks then it was slashed to 3 bucks to stop people figuring it was cheaper to buy their own. The price has crept back up.

At the turn of the century, you used to call about an internet outage and they'd give you a clueless response. Instead, you'd say your cable TV picture was fuzzy and they'd send a tech out next day. That was how you'd get it fixed 20 years ago.

The most recent time I called Comcast about a cable outage they insisted they couldn't do anything as it was my own modem. More serious was the fact it was an unapproved modem so they insisted they would need to FedEx a new modem first (costing $$$) and then they could fix my line. Fortunately it was an area outage so I didn't take them up on their kind offer.

The moral of that story is before calling when you own your own modem for an outage, check if it's an area outage first.

Just had a nightmare experience with Spectrum/ Charter switching to using my own equipment. It was surreal and very similar to that South Park episode about cable companies.

Because I was on a grandfathered package, he gleefully told me it was actually going to cost me $17/ mo MORE to remove the modem rental and phone service.

I had to threaten to call our congresswomen to get them to magically find a package that reduced the rate in step to the decrease in service.

The funny part was when at the end of waiting on hold for an hour, after cancelling the service, they provisioned the modem, they gave me config file for 1Mbps internet.

The service rep when I called back (after waiting another half hour on hold) was quite pleasant about fixing it and I’m humming along at 500 Mbps now, but man I can’t wait to spite quit them when StarLink is up and running. Can’t imagine that 1Mbps provisioning was exactly a mistake

You also lose $ by not growing your own food, by not servicing your own car, by paying an index fund manager, etc etc

Buying a modem and plugging it in is incredibly - mindbogglingly easy. You plug the modem into a wall and plug the ethernet cable into the router. Thats it. Period. It saves you $150 a year. Everyone I know that didn't do it was too lazy, or completely fiscally illiterate. It takes no time (its actually faster than getting someone to come out to install the box which usually that has to be set up weeks in advance). There is no excuse for not doing it.

Considering that a DOCSIS 3.1 modem costs right about $150 right now, this actually doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Add a decent-quality consumer router and you can be looking at around two years to break even, which is right about there with replacement cycle on some of these things.

Here's something to think about: how many people renting their routers can actually afford the initial $100 plus that buying your own router costs? Given just how little people have in savings (what is it, like the average american can't afford an emergency over $500?) it's likely the $5 or $10 a month charge on your bill is more manageable at the start than shopping and spending the money on the router.

Of course, the added charge is more than the upfront cost of the router and we should be making it easier and cheaper for people to access the internet, but this is more me musing about the upfront cost.

And this doesn't even get into companies just charging anyway or not even allowing third party routers on their network.

I don't think there's a legal interest rate that's as bad as paying $150 annually to rent a $100 router, that's basically 150% interest.

So regardless how bad your credit rating and interest rate are, it's overwhelmingly worth putting a router onto your credit card.

Oh I absolutely don't disagree with that at all. I just think it's an interesting aspect to it, _especially_ for me, having recently been inundated with ads about "Xfinity's awesome router that you need for ~MAXIMUM GAMING~", which directs people to the idea that they _need_ the "official" router from their ISP to get the most of their service.

In France, a router is rented about 3€ ($4) per month by the majors ISPs (the renting cost is not shown idependently by two of the three major ISPs. Orange explicitly shows its renting cost on bills.

That's cheap for a broadband router-modem-WiFi AC-2 channel voice box. They are all customized broadcom boards.

Using another router is technically very hard for anything other than the IP data : Orange for example uses ATM QoS with specific DHCP WAN string initialization options, specific SIP channel setup and even worse for IPTV VLAN. The SIP channel sold is almost impossible to use with a third party SIP client device.

Let's add they won't lift a finger in case of an issue if you use your own router.

To sum it up : not worth the trouble !

Being the tech-savvy person I am, I opted to buy my own router using Verizon FiOS. Now because I use my own router, I cannot get Live Cable Listings. That feature doesn't work if you don't opt-in and get the ISP's router.

You probably can't monitor your usage or check any data caps you may hit as well. All the xfinity tools for monitoring rely (or at least up until recently relied) on using their leased or purchased router.

This is literally what made me cut the cord and realize I didn't need cable and the 300 channels of garbage to begin with. The basic package I had included ESPN which I don't watch, but did not include BBC World or cspan. CSPAN!!!!

I use an OTA antenna hooked up to my plex server for dvr and just pay for internet now. Much better experience.

I seem to return my cable modems, in NV & CA, about every 14-18 months. I walk in, ask for a new one, give them the (busted) old one.

Not losing sleep over this.

Feels akin to the "control your finances, stop buying coffee at coffee shops!" kind of content.

While we're on this topic:

Anyone have recommendations for a decent (secure) 5G router to by, in May 2020? That is, to get (decent-ish) wifi service from the air (and fully without cable).

Ditto for any VPN providers that seem good to work with.

I recently switched to Spectrum and wanted to use my old cable modem (purchased back when I had time Warner before the merger), but the installation technician told me that they no longer do rental fees for a modem, only a router! I actually didn't believe it so I used my old modem anyways but he was correct when I got around to checking!

Spectrum does charge a rental fee for a WiFi router, which seems ok to me but I do wish there was an option to just buy it directly from them.

I'm currently renting one for $5/month. The technician who setup my internet told me that I'd need to talk to the main company about returning that since he was just a contractor. I tried their support chat one time, and they said I'd need to call instead. Instead I decided to keep it for the time being and use it as an AP in my network instead of as the router. Once I buy a matching set of APs I'll probably try to return it again.

Home routers are simple when they work and could be go terribly wrong when they don't.

The issue is: a lot of ISP-provided routers are total trash that are buggy and reset themselves sometimes. So on the one hand, you get better support, but on the other hand, you may be getting a worse product. This may still be a better trade-off for most people.

I wish ISP's would partner with eero or some other router company that actually make good quality fast routers.

I have Comcast at home, and they flat out require me to rent a modem from them in order to receive static IPs. I have their modem set up in bridge mode and a BSD router behind it, but would really love the option of sourcing my own modem.

At least the tech who came out to do the install was kind enough to give me a rackmount modem! I hadn't seen many before, but asked for one just in case they could provide it.

Living in the UK, most ISPs will give you with a router if you sign a contract of a year or more. They are are usually branded $ISP-hub but really just generic ADSL or fiber modem/routers with a colorful casing (and in some cases just a sticker).

Having moving several times and switching ISPs I now have one spare fiber modem/router and 2 spare ADSL modem/routers, plus all sorts of cables :)

I had been using my own adsl modem up until the point it completely stopped working. I decided to rent a modem from the company after that. And I was surprised how stable to connection can be with the modem provided by telecom.

I think that if somebody is renting you a wire it has some sense to rent terminators as well. In this case the company can tweak entire infrastructure for their customers.

This seems like mostly a problem in the US? I live in Spain and have Movistar as my ISP. I only pay for the service(600/600) and they provided me with an ONT and a router free of charge. Granted, the router is absolute garbage(WiFi is 802.11g, and I received it in 2020) but it was free. I use my own router, so doesn't matter for me anyway.

Ok, but for the "average" person, if there's an issue and they call Comcast to come out, if it is your router that is the problem, they'll charge you for the visit. That in itself isn't the issue, but, Comcast being Comcast, you need to sometimes be savvy because they will try and pull stuff.

At least in the past I was able to buy a modem on Ebay (used) for $40. I returned the one that came with the package. When I moved, Comcast wanted to bill me for a lost modem. Get a receipt when you return the modem. Take a picture and store it on OneDrive/DropBox in a folder called "Comcast Sucks"

jeez, that's how much I pay in Europe for like 7 months of 150Mb internet including renting router

also the rental fee is like 2-3$ per month, I don't think I could buy similar router for 36$ and even for 72$ if I have decided to change ISP would be much more than retail price

I don't think the problem you have is the rental fee.

Of course, if it wasn't a profitable business, they would not be doing it.

Given such devices having 'backdoors' directly connecting to ISPs' internal systems (looking at you; TR069)

Some vendors also customizing firmware to not to allow customers change DNS, so they can hijack whatever they want into your pages.

+ a set top box too. The combined amount is probably more than most European countries pay for their whole bill.

Is this particular to Comcast? In 20+ years of having home internet service, I've never rented (or purchased a modem/router). In every instance they have been provided to me for free. I've even been sent new updated ones on a number of occasions without cost.

I recently got AT&T Fiber, and I was forced to pay an extra $10/month for their modem/router.

Given a choice of renting a router from Centurylink for $10/month and purchasing it for roughly $100, I purchased it a couple years ago. It already paid off for itself, but an interesting thing happened in December:

I received a phone call from CenturyLink saying that I'm eligible for free upgrade from 100Mbps to 1Gbps. Surprised with their benevolence, I double checked the agent to verify that this is not a scam. They ran some checks and determined that I will need to replace the router with a newer model to handle faster speeds. I said that I purchased the router from CenturyLink, and I'm ok swapping it for a newer model, as long as there are no extra fees, and that I will own (and not rent) the new model. They agreed to this. I got the new modem in mail, swapped it, got the gigabit speed and sent the original one back. Next month I saw a $10 modem rental charge. I called them, they argued, I argued back, they said that they'll need my permission to transcribe the earlier conversation (that's strange, because they always play the message that a conversation will be recorded). A few days later they called back saying that they transcribed the call, found out that they agreed to not renting the modem, apologized and gave me a refund.

I still don't fully understand why they offered me higher speed without paying more. I had no recording of the phone call and they had the upper hand, but they were fair in resolution. Overall, I had a very good run with Centurylink despite hearing only horror stories about American ISPs.

TLDR: Be very explicit on the call when someone offers to upgrade the modem that you own.

On the one hand its super convenient to have the ISP router. They can reboot it remotely and troubleshoot. On the other hand its fully locked down, I cant even change DNS. I don't pay for renting the router, but if it was an unreasonable amount I would move.

Lol this is exactly the reason I bought a surfboard the first month I moved in, and it's already paid for itself (and it's very easy to configure - a phone call to their support, read 'em a barcode, and you're ready to go).

The "Average Consumer" is problematic as a concept as different demographics and households have vastly different needs.

tl;dr: If you're comfortable having a worse router for multiple years and missing out on new technology, yes, you can save a few bucks.

I'm a tech professional (not IT), but fairly comfortable, did a considerable amount of research to try to replace Comcasts router with a $90 model -- the range didn't cover the house, couldn't handle as many devices and was more flakey.

The routers they use are often $200-300 in range. In addition, they are often setup with defaults that make sense. In addition, they can support and troubleshoot them.

There are many specifics that go into choosing a router -- and it can be really complicated to figure out what makes sense to you.

In addition -- the technology changes ever year or two -- while renting, it's easy to swap out for the latest model, otherwise you have to dish out for the newest router, which may have it's own flaws.

I bought a cable modem & never rented but then had my cable company try to collect money for not returning ”their” router... It’s like $20 deposit, but I get nasty-grams every once in a while.

The average consumer spends over $150 a year to not think about their router.

Don't get me wrong, I hate on the big ISPs as much as the next guy, but this is pretty far down the list of their worst behavior.

AT&T forces usage of their modem for fiber service - $10/month

I'm currently using Comcast and brought my own router and modem. I was able to bring my own router for Verizon FiOS as well.

I'm wondering if most commentors here are edge cases.

I also use Comcast with my own modem. Despite that, I've had to have Comcast remove their modem rental fee on multiple occasions.

Me too. And I use cablecards at $1.50/month instead of renting their crappy DVR. I picked up the cablemodem at Fry's about 5 years ago for like $50. I'm sure it paid itself off in the first year.

I switched to my own router and modem last year with Comcast, and it was shockingly easy to get the old router returned and the fee removed on monthly bills going forward. I haven't seen it come back since. I was previously paying $7/month for it.

I was able to go drop off the old equipment I was renting at one of those physical Comcast support centers, though. I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

I got tired of the Comcast charge and bought a decent cable router off Amazon.

I rarely have had any problems over the past 4 years since I have made the switch.

My grandmother used to pay $3.99 (iirc) a month to the ISP for a "protection plan" on the cable wire underneath her house.

My 86-year-old mom is better off renting the equipment and having the ISP come over and fix it when something gets screwed up.

Can't wait until we just get internet from the air and this chokehold by local cable companies goes away

What is the value of the time I save when my internet acts up and my ISP blames the router though? :)

this doesn’t surprise me at all, and for a very simple reason: this being a zero-sum game, it’s inevitable that consumers lose money on this proposition because otherwise it wouldn’t be profitable for them and they wouldn’t do it.

It's not a zero-sum game. The consumer benefits by not having to spend their time doing research and configuring routers they buy themselves.

If there is sufficient margin in installing and configuring routers for individual consumers, then why are there not competing businesses which do specifically this? Have you not identified a market gap?

Perhaps the margins are actually quite low, and it's not really a business, but just an extra revenue stream for an existing business model - providing the internet connection.

Most consumers are happy to pay the money simply because they want convenience, and also, because they're getting "credit," by paying off the router in instalments rather than a lump sum.

Tangential question: could you recommend a good not-too-expensive wireless router?

Well all residential isps ive dealt with at home give u no choice.. U have to use their router.

This is _probably_ true with my current cable ISP, Virgin (UK). It was certainly not true with Zen over VDSL. With BT I had their VDSL modem plus my own router.

The trouble are the cable providers because they need to "pair" the devices, and they don't want to do it with 3rd party, like AVM Fritz!boxes, even though could easily handle it. For financial reasons I have not bought a replacement cable router that may or may not work yet.

AFAIK the FCC requires that ISPs allow customers to use their own modems. random source I found: https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...

Try telling that to AT&T and their GigaPower brand

ok, but thats only relevant in the US then.

This site is pretty US-centric. Also, I'd imagine that Canada/EU would have similar rules, given how they're generally more pro-consumer than the US.

The average modem+router costs about $150, maybe more for a good one. To keep up with technology, you need to buy a new one every 1-2 years (DOCSIS, Wifi, etc). If you aren't having your ISP swap you to their newest hardware, you are missing out. Comcast's latest XB6/XB7 gateways are actually pretty darn good.

You do not need a new modem every two years. In the same sense that a 2 year old phone works fine.

You need to buy a new router every year? I think the only thing needed here is a citation.

How about NYT which suggests every 3-4 years? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/technology/personaltech/i...

Most people just need to get a new modem when they get an email from Comcast alerting them their current one is obsolete, and they can use the same router for years. As a power user, you are in a position to get the full benefit of quality networking hardware and to make a rational tradeoff between buying and owning, but typical ISP customers aren’t and are just paying because they think they have to or because they don’t look at their bill.

Where are you getting 1-2 years from? Even if you are trying to stay on the bleeding edge it would be about once every five years, and with the lower speed packages that most people are actually paying for, even 10 year old equipment would be fine.

The average consumer has gotten dumber in regards to tech over the last 40 years. People have treated computers like appliances. When I meet a 70 year old that can't email, it's not 1995, they were 50 in the year 2000. People's heads are in the sand and want tv apps. Good they can pay the price for thier stupidity.

Sorry for the rant but, seriously?

I don't agree at all.

Profiting from people who can afford stupid only encourages stupid. Then we end up with stupid being promoted as what people want because it's profitable.

>Profiting from people who can afford stupid only encourages stupid. Then we end up with stupid being promoted as what people want because it's profitable.

Welcome to startup country.

> Profiting from people who can afford stupid only encourages stupid.

How? It would seem like a disincentive to being "stupid" (naive is a better word for it).

How, exactly, would that be a disincentive to being stupid?

Customer gets what they pay for and provider gets free money. Where's the disincentive here?

How people live isn't entirely their own decision -- it's also determined by the world they're a part of. We've given profit-seeking systems a lot of control over how this world is structured.

Only people who can afford to be stupid are stupid. You're right. People who can't afford, or otherwise choose to be frugal don't tend to fall into these traps. You'll find people who study consumer reports, read up on several companies before purchasing big products, weigh the costs and benefits of different insurance companies, phone plans, etc, frequently. It's good financial sense.

Some people do not want to put the time and effort into learning about household things. And sometimes that's OK. Even consumers who are aware of routers being rented probably don't view they are "losing $150 yearly" to Comcast or Verizon - it's a convenience for them and allows their ISP to manage upgrades, replacements, and allows lower techs for those ISPs who do house calls to debug a router (since it's what they are trained on).

Sure, run your own home cloud, but i bet the article doesn't say "consumers losing X a year because they subscribe to Dropbox" or "X a year because they pay for website hosting", when they could use a free host like github for basic html files.

> Only people who can afford to be stupid are stupid. You're right.

No, I didn't say "only people who can afford to be stupid are stupid".

I don't think we should demean those who don't know any better. Instead, we should rage against policies that take advantage of people, even if those people don't know any better.

It would be nice if humans behaved that way, but in the game theoretic sense, it's not a equilibrium based on commonly observed human behaviors. And I personally think policies that expect to exist at a non-equilibrium point are doomed to fail. By far the more advantageous route is to educate people into not being duped.

If I spent enough time before every transaction or interaction I make to ensure I'm fully informed about the product/service, the company providing it, support and other options to remedy a disagreement or misunderstanding, and asking (and figuring out how to trust) the experience of other people who have dealt with this company in the past I would have literally no time to do anything else.

Stop blaming the consumer for not working their way out of an impossible situation.

You're preaching to a generation that only knows phones, right? If it's not wireless, it doesn't exist. Email? What's that?

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