Starting Sunday, cable companies can no longer ‘rent’ you the router you own
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Here we have the richest country in the world, inventor of the internet with the most innovative tech companies with the absolute worst internet experience among developed countries: Overpriced, bad quality of service and zero flexibility. Customers are treated like absolute dummies, it is a totally different world. And Germany is actually quite bad compared to asian countries.
It makes sense when you consider that the US has a much higher resistance to business regulation and consumer protection- less overhead for innovative new businesses but also allowing entrenched interests to consolidate as much as they have.
Here I can get high speed cable or crappy DSL and that's the options that exist for wired service. Both of them are incumbent regulatory monopolies.
I wonder who got bribed for that one?
But that's the long and the short of it. No competition and no incentive to improve.
The history of the US and Canada is one where well-meaning individuals have been duped into giving powers to politicians who in turn create "reasonable" regulations that have the effect of protecting select firms from the market process. And when the costs of these anti-competitive regulations emerge (higher prices, worse service), those same well-meaning individuals demand those same politicians to "fix" things, but only in ways that further entrench those monopolies rather than removing the source of their monopoly power at the root.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Here in San Jose, CA, I'm pretty happy with Sail. It actually took me around a year to bring them to me: Initially my address was not served by them, I have to say I "want business internet" on their website to make someone contact me, and eventually bring their residential service to me (they use some short range wireless technology, a dish but not pointing to satellites but their other relay dishes nearby, so the latency is much better than satellites).
Another thing is that I refuse to use any service that doesn't allow me to use my own router directly without any additional NAT. This is why I chose Sail over Sonic, a more popular local ISP in the Bay Area: In my area Sonic's only service is the one they resale from AT&T, which doesn't allow you to use your own router.
What does the ISP lose here? Really, the only reason I can think of for these limits is to charge more for "optional" services and to hide the fact that you're oversubscribing. My ISP does it too, by providing routers that can't even reach advertised speeds. Fortunately, with a decent device, I can get the full speed.
https://community.ui.com/questions/INSTRUCTIONS-Bypass-ATT-F...
Ethernet on one side, and ethernet on the other, a couple ms between them.
Hopefully that’ll become illegal and be enforced this time around.
This can be done by authenticating, then using a managed switch to swap the wall module from the VLAN with the at&t router, to a VLAN with another router spoofing the at&t router's MAC address.
I've been using this approach for years and have found it worth it as I do not trust the provided router. The downside is I have to spend five minutes going through this process every time there is a power outage, luckily there are only a few a year here so not much of an issue.
Are there any benefits to what you're doing over just doing that?
Edit: In my case, bandwidth drops from 970mbps at the ATT gateway to 930mbps at the internal router (2nd NAT). Latecy drop is higher, from 3-4ms at the ATT gateway to about 9-11ms, but most likely that is due to the Moca 2.5 that I've had to run between ATT and my internal router.
The best-of-both-worlds solution here is to have the outer ISP-provided router put your own router into some kind of DMZ, or use a bridge mode if the ISP router provides it. This basically turns your ISP-provided router into a dumber modem, and leaves all NAT and routing to your own hardware.
The latency measured inside is around 9-11ms, so much higher than the 3-4ms measured at the ATT gateway.
I am not doing any port-forwarding, but I can definitely see it run into all kinds of problems, or require some configuration beyond my simple skills.
I'll investigate your comment: The best-of-both-worlds solution here is to have the outer ISP-provided router put your own router into some kind of DMZ, or use a bridge mode if the ISP router provides it. This basically turns your ISP-provided router into a dumber modem, and leaves all NAT and routing to your own hardware.
Other comments here mention how to put the AT&T router behind a Ubiquiti gateway and proxy the authentication to it via some scripts. This reduces the reliance on the AT&T router for direct traffic, but you still need the router operational for those authentication handshakes.
The router they provided also had a tendency to both get 'congested' and drop connections.
Last, they have remote access to the provided router and do automatic, remote updates, which I am opposed to. I suspect they have other features they can abuse remotely. I want to control all my own hardware.
loled - i mean sure its no biggy, but i dont even remember when i had to reprogram the ovens clock the last time. probably been a year or two since the last outage.
I thought SFP is the one doing all fiber-to-ethernet conversion, so would that work?
And in the EU, does that mean you could theoretically buy your own ONT + Router if you have an Fibre Internet Connection?
I hate having so many boxes, so I have always preferred to have Modem / ONT + Router in One, but it seems to be an unpopular option around the world. As a matter of fact I would even want my TV to be the Wireless Router so I could no boxes underneath my TV.
The reverse engineering needed to get access is huge. There are people who managed to match the credentials with the DHCP request to be sent but Orange can change this anytime.
Other providers (Bouygues for instance) are easier as they do not try to do that.
What surprises me is that they have maybe 0.001% of their subscribers who will even think about replacing the box (and dealing withe the issues as this is not supported) so I tend to think that the ISP is just dumb rather than malicious.
so... pretty decent on their part.
Return their modem, get a receipt, double check the serial number on the receipt matches the equipment you returned, and save that receipt. You may need it if you ever move or drop Comcast in the future.
i'll get back to you in 5-10 years to let you know how it goes, but i'm not very concerned.
I think I heard about that in a story posted probably the malicious compliance reddit group, and am NOT a lawyer...
1. This law does not affect Comcast, because Comcast does not charge you any rental or extra fees for using your own modem. Switch from a Comcast modem to your own, and your internet bill comes down exactly by what had been the cost of your Comcast rental.
2. Comcast generally raises costs every year or so, almost always at this time of year.
While it doesn't effect Comcast directly, it does change perceptions and forces in the market. That is, the market can now bear, and Comcast is taking advantage of that. Or so it seems.
I'd be interested to know if others in SV (or elsewhere) have seen effective prices (not just nominal rack rates) increasing.
For the record, I don't love Comcast and have even written blog posts about how much I dislike them. But in terms of pricing, I've had an OK experience over a long period of time.
I pay £28 ($35 ish) for 150Mbps symmetric. (In practice it's up to 220, never less than the 150 nominal.)
Before that I paid £18 ($22 ish) for 30/1.5 (30Mbps down is probably ok for me, I upgraded primarily for the up, but 30 symmetric not offered).
My point was that my prices are going down and my speeds are going up, which was not the experience of the commenter I was responding to.
Because I purchased a (supported) cable modem from a third party, my ISP won't provide services which are supposed to be included in my service.
Their systems don't "recognize" my cable modem as existing on their network, so services that should be provided through my link are denied, claiming that my devices "aren't on the network."
It's a huge scam. We need real competition in internet service providers.
Not a bad idea. But since I don't actually use the services I'm not getting, I'll likely just vote with my wallet instead.
Actually, where I live there is competition.
In fact, there is a second cable ISP in my apartment building.
What's more, in addition to the cable ISP I have (Spectrum), I have a DSL link (Fusion) as well.
I'd dump Spectrum (and tried to do so), but long term construction has blocked access to the access points for my building, so I'm stuck with them for now.
Once the scaffolding blocking access is removed (it's been up for more than three years), Spectrum will be history for me.
Even more, Verizon has been claiming they're trying to get access to implement FIOS in my building, but I think they're lying since they were able to site a cell tower on the roof a couple years ago.
However, I live in the most densely populated city in the US.
In most other places in the US there are, at most, two ISPs which provide service. Usually a cable provider and a DSL or Satellite provider.
That's what I meant be a lack of competition. My apologies if I didn't make that clear.
The more complicated matter is that firmware is typically delivered to the modem via the DOCSIS management protocol (lower level than TR-069) and so the ISP must have firmware available for all supported modems. This is the major factor that leads to compatibility lists. It is possible for the ISP to not manage firmware but most don't want to take the risk as a malfunctioning modem can take down a neighborhood in some cases.
The worst case scenario is a poorly secured cable modem gets infected by malware, then infects a bunch of other cable modems before switching to "take down the neighborhood" mode in which it transmits random garbage onto the cable. Since the cable is a shared resource, any misbehaving modem can prevent all others being able to connect.
Perhaps just 1% vulnerable modems across the USA, and most people's home internet would be offline for weeks until whoever in every single neighborhood has an infected modem is identified and unplugged.
Considering that, I can completely see why they wouldn't want you using a cheapo modem you got from Walmart.
I don't see many (any?) people trying to connect their own GPON equipment to GPON fibre networks.
The equipment ISP provided isn't very powerful and will likely overheat and degrade the connection if you use it so violently.
In most case I guess people just plug their own router after the GPON and don't bother what is the GPON doing.
No need to transmit all the time to cause disruption... You could for example repeatedly transmit packet headers followed by a long break, and collision avoidance algorithms would stop any other device transmitting.
In SF, I have multiple ISP options. I get gigabit fiber for $40/month and no nonsense. But my girlfriend lives in an area with Comcast only, where the price is much higher, the service is much worse, and they had loaded her bill down with absurd equipment rental charges.
When sufficient competition doesn't exist, we shouldn't just abandon people to predatory companies.
That said, if the quality were to drop, if they were to engage in anticompetitive behavior, if they were to provide tools to subvert an election, if they were to repeatedly buy out competitors, or any combination of the above, I would drop them in a heartbeat.
No.
The presumption should be making it easy to enable competition, which the current rules don't do. Make it easy for Google to come in and lay fiber on their own dime.
Why do you assume "market failure", and not "regulatory capture"?
> the presumption should be regulation
Can we first get rid of the extant anti-competitive regulations that create and maintain monopolies?
> But my girlfriend lives in an area with Comcast only
Have you looked into what's stopping a would-be competing ISP?
As far as justification, it goes the other way around. If you want to interfere in the free market, you need to provide good justification that this problem is not being created by the regulatory environment already. 99.9% of the time, it is.
To extend his point, "red tape" isn't the only regulation-related problem. Don't forget that in many local governments gave monopoly grants to select ISPs. Then there's the "bootleggers and baptists" [1] effect, where well-meaning regulation has a larger anti-competitive effect benefiting extant firms, e.g., requiring would-be ISPs to also serve cost-prohibitive rural areas.
Pretending that extant government regulation is the never the problem is just as bad as pretending it's the only problem.
My experience is that even this minimal amount of competition absolutely cuts through the bullshit that you get from a monopoly provider.
Classifying as utility companies may be one path to the end state we both desire, but lived experience proves it is not singularly so.
Do note that in the US, the largest influence on the monopoly position of ISPs is not to do with any inherent property of the industry, but due to exclusive contracts/rights of way that local governments grant to ISPs. Obviously, the ISPs seek this sort of arrangement and lobby for it. The regulation that can help the ISP situation in the US may just as well be restrictions on municipalities as restrictions on ISPs.
Last year I had to deal with Comcast with regards to an identity theft.
When I refused to jump through their extra hoops (I had provided them more than enough information to prove my claim, they wanted everything just short of a DNA Swab,) they told me that I would never be able to get service through them unless I kissed the ring.
When I told them that I base my residency choices on being able to -not- have Comcast as a cable provider, their script rather obviously did not have a response to that based on where the conversation went after.
They -expect- to be a a monopoly, and their internal policies already reflect that.
Separate the running of OSI Layer 1/2 from Layer 3:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_network
Some examples:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23734319
* https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-...
Which is unnecessary: only the 'retail' ISP should really need to talk to the 'wholesale' fibre provider.
In fact, in the Ars example, on initial connection, if the fibre has no existing contract, you are sent to a landing page which lists all the available ISPs.
Clicking on one (AFAICT) sends you to their order page where you enter your personal/billing information to sign up, and henceforth they are your Layer 3 ISP.
In Japan, there are some ISP that bundle the contract (they deal with NTT (the fiber provider) themselves). In that case, if you are moving ISP, you need to re-do the entire contract, including another set-up fee for the fiber line.
Ammon Fibre from the Ars story:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHGhNwzpXLw
The fibre line is pre-existing just like your electrical or natural gas probably is now: there's no re-setting-up that component. You are in a default VLAN that gives you options, and when you sign up the VLAN is changed.
IIRC, the price difference was enough that only people who really wanted a public IP block out of their home would have done it.
There's no need to lease the fiber infrastructure, just provide interconnect nodes for ISPs.
Municipal broadband maintenance can be paid for by charging interconnect fees to the ISPs who wish to service that area.
Once the infrastructure is in place, barriers to entry for ISPs is very low. All you need is bandwidth and connection to the municipal network.
Maintenance can be provided on a cost plus basis by an independent (i.e., not the ISPs) company that manages and maintains the infrastructure.
And surpluses from interconnect fees can be used for both network enhancements and other municipal programs.
So the government should pay for a thing to be created but private enterprise should maintain it? I believe if anything, you flipped this. Because when I think private enterprise, I think maintenance and long term strategy of only profit. They will do nothing and then dump the hot mess back on the people when it breaks down.
Last mile infra should be owned, operated and maintained by the people. ISPs should connect to the network and offer services. I should be able to have multiple ISPs and free local network access.
Which is paid for by a levy charged to (Layer 3) ISPs, which is passed onto customers at the end of the fibre.
Do you feel the same way about sewer lines? Water pipes? How about roads?
Where I live, the company that delivers the power is responsible for maintaining the delivery infrastructure, while those who provide the power are (or can be) completely separate entities.
As such, it seems to me that even your example would argue for municipal broadband.
This would further entrench them as government-chartered monopolies. Heck, most of the current anti-competitive forces extend from either explicit government monopoly grants or regulatory capture.
Or continue to beg the political process to solve the problems they created when they interfered with the market process.
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
They are going to be entrenched as government-chartered monopolies any way you look at it. ISPs either need a right of way to lay cable or a license to use RF spectrum. Even if you could magically overcome those problems, or are willing to deal with the chaos of removing the applicable regulations, the Internet would become fragmented since the dominant players would freeze competition out of the market. (Recall the olden days of online service providers when everyone's network was independent of everyone else's, and even then it was only regulation of the telephone companies that allowed those service providers to exist.)
As I understand it, both of those can (and do) support multiple competing services. Further, regulation dealing with scarce (ostensibly government-owned) resources is significantly less anti-competitive than, say, regulation requiring all would-be ISPs to also serve cost-prohibitive rural areas.
Look, I can appreciate the position that a government-granted public monopoly might be better for consumers than a government-granted private monopoly, but consumers might still be better served by removing those government-created barriers to competition.
> the dominant players would freeze competition out of the market
How do you imagine they would achieve that using only market forces?
> it was only regulation of the telephone companies that allowed those service providers to exist
I'm not grasping your argument. Perhaps unrelated to your point, but telephone service was (and largely still is) a government-granted monopoly. And there too, rather than removing those regulatory barriers to competition, the illusion of competition was created by adding more regulations.
It was a pretty blatant move to push customers off of grandfathered plans. For example this was about 10 years ago when iPhones were becoming popular, and at the time at least there were iPhone specific features for data plan and visual voicemail. So someone upgrading to an iPhone would be forced to give up any grandfathered plans on their account.
Generally I’m not a fan of this kind of targeted legislation and rule making. Pricing should be mandated to be advertised all-in or left alone; these folks aren’t gonna let this income go.
$10 says this is exactly what they’re going to do.
I’m looking to get away from all the sorts of access fees and charges with my current carrier, yet after doing the math the ETF would have come out to a full calendar year of the same fees plus about 3%.
Oh except despite having multiple carriers in my city, none of the other ones seem interested in servicing my building.
I hate this damn racket.
More frustratingly, though, they charge you more for internet-only service than they do for TV+Internet. Every time you try to go Internet-only, they offer you a 'deal' where they throw in cable TV service for -$5. And then they ship you a cable TV box that you store in a box in your attic under penalty of hundreds of dollars if you lose it and can't return it at the end of your service.
I've returned the cable TV box before, and they just ship you a new one. ("We've noticed you have TV service but do not have a cable TV box, here is the equipment you need! Aren't we nice?!")
Thankfully I've got FTTH now. Slightly-less-thankfully I'm on ATT so I've got to pay the rental fee, but it's still a much better deal than Comcast ever offered. When Sonic finally serves my house directly Real Soon Like Now, the bill will be cut in half again. But still, mandatory rental fee.
I’ve done this so many times that I’ve lost count. I sucks that it’s a time drain doing this + last time I cancelled I had to buy a new modem (because the old one was not supported- which is BS because it worked for 5 years on their network already)
Actually say you want to cancel. You will be routed to a cancellation department. They are ridiculously empowered. I have a memo to do this with a few services once a year.
I briefly had gigabit with them for $140/mo, just because I could. (because I've complained for so many years that if I could get gigabit, I would). 1000 down/50 up or similar. But eventually the novelty wore off and I downgraded to 250.
Currently for me, symmetric gigabit is $80/mo with ATT, $90 resold by sonic, but if/when Sonic brings their service directly it's $60.
As a 2 person household, yeah, I'd have a hard time saying 25Mbps down is not enough. It's a lot of work to use 100 down, forget gigabit. And there's a bit difference between filling a 100mbps pipe, and actually being limited by it.
If there is a class action against Frontier, sign me up.
However, the lawyers will receive millions from the class action.
Is it to force you to provide an Xfinity hotspot?
As far as I'm concerned, they're simply charging me to use my own equipment.
Once your contract is up, it should be $60/year more for unlimited using your own modem.
Unlimited with your own modem is $30/month.
Unlimited with their modem is $14/month for the modem/router + $11/month for unlimited = $25/month.
It's crazy making. I do NOT want them to know everything about how we use their service, what devices are connected, usage patterns, etc. But we can't avoid it. We're getting data farmed and we're billed extra if we don't allow it.
This bill does nothing to alleviate this situation for customers, and Comcast just announced that this data cap scheme is going to be rolling out across their network.
If Airbnb included those fees the pricing would often come out higher than a hotel in many cases. And hotels include cleaning costs as part of the nightly rate
This is all attributable to weak consumer protection laws.
This is one area where regulation is probably the only real solution.
Cable companies and other utility providers need special treatment in the law because they enjoy special advantages as monopolists. Instead of saying "anyone is allowed to dig up the road, bury cables and let the customers choose the provider with the best service" we often allow only one or two cable providers and add some special rules to make them treat their hostage customers better.
Have the government lay fibre to every home and business, and allow any ISP to compete for service over that fibre.
Australia tried, and around 10% of homes got connected. But the conservative Liberal government got in power and changed it from fibre to DSL, a move that was universally derided as unfeasible both economically and technologically.
It was known to be a waste of tens of billions of dollars - but Rupert Murdoch doesn't want poor people to have access to information outside his propaganda network, so he handed the election to the Liberals (the conservatives) in exchange for destroying the network and salting the earth so it was hard for even a future government to fix.
Telstra, the big incumbent ISP with a monopoly in many areas, also had alot to do with it. Instead of gigabit fibre, we now have 25mbit DSL, which doesn't work when it's raining even lightly, or in strong winds.
This network was also slower to build, and far more expensive than the fibre.
But as long as it's built with fibre, it works. New Zealand's network is enourmously successful, and now anyone has access to gigabit fibre on their choice of ISP. It works both in theory and in practice, you just must not allow a conservative government to hand it over to monopoly corporations.
The common "government can't be trusted" rubbish is bunk, the government only screwed it up in Australia because that was their goal, the fibre networks have always been a success.
If you want to argue that a government-granted public monopoly is better for consumers than a government-granted private monopoly, I'd be inclined to agree. But there are other options that might be better still for consumers, which is what I think the above poster was trying to get at.
Whether they are allowed call it a "meal deal" or a "convenience fee" or a "special discount" or a "rental fee" is more about marketing than economics.
I'm sure your general point stands, but you absolutely can. And in San Francisco, you technically can only buy the toy separately, though for much cheaper when paired with the meal.
The fact that telcos itemize the modem means it's supposed to be a kind of elective, just as in older days when one could rent a "fancy" phone directly (with a voice-mail indicator!) from the provider. Those were add-ons, with extra fees.
I see no validation for not allowing customers to use own modems. Sure, the techical support fee will be gamed in such case. But at least this will clearly separate the infrastructure from the user equipment.
If modem indeed falls into user equipment category, then the rental must be elective. If it's infrastructure, then it has been already paid for in the delivery fees.
Wouldn't installing conduit be a still-better option for consumers? Also, the government-granted ISP monopoly approach prohibits would-be providers that don't need to use cable.
Anyway, your dichotomy ignores the historical reality: local politicians subsidized builds by promising providers they didn't have to worry about competition, subsidies extracted from the future captured customers, subsidies that are in fact the very things people complain about now.
Sure, I can and do choose Comcast intead. But the pricing creates a false sense of price, competition, etc.
The root of these issues is letting sociopaths have the power they do.
I'd wager that if you were able to get your hands on an oracle that could provide the true count of incidental contact and the measure of impact on the average person's life by sociopaths versus good people who do bad things as a matter of performing their daily routines, the difference is probably an order of magnitude heavier on the side of the latter. Not to mention Hanlon's razor and all that.
How many times is it that the CEO comes up with the idea to do something like this? For start ups, I can see the CEO actually having this kind of involvement. Jobs/Musk/Zuck all come to mind of a CEO that is in total control. ATT/Spectrum/Comcast/etc all seem to be on a different level. This adding of fees type of schemes seems more like something the bean counters come up with, and then eventually the CEO is informed/blesses the decisions. Would a CEO in these companies really be the ones scheming up ideas like this or be more concerned about the next acquisition?
Or it could be true that many have tried and failed at it?
Back in India, we still have a 100 Mbps connection for ~$16/month (500 GB cap and thereafter 2 Mbps unlimited)... There are more cheaper options than this still available.
So it may be worth the extra cost just to hold them accountable and ensure reliable internet
I used my own modem and router, and the few times I had a line problem they just asked me to connect my laptop directly to the modem with an ethernet cable to troubleshoot.
This is about the few providers which charge you a fee for “rent” when you don’t have their equipment (which is absurd).
I have owned my own equipment with at least half a dozen providers large and small and never had to pay this fee.
Another company did this. It was AT&T or Verizon. There was actual uproar over it and they eventually reversed the decision. However, you can’t always count on an uproar to always have any impact.
HN is an English-language website, which often translates to majority US. We can further speculate that HN is likely majority able-bodied, heterosexual, male, cis, white. That’s not a reason to make it less inclusive of people outside those majorities.