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Comment by syshum | Hacker News Reader

The support angle is the party line for why they want to own the boxes, but there has never been any actual data to back this up. Further I do not see this being a real problem, hell I use a custom router but if I have a problem I have hook up the ISP router to talk to customer service, I am fine with that.

The real reason they want this is 2 fold

1. Money. it is always money. They want to be able to advertise "Internet for only $30" but then tack on 20-30 in "other fees" to get that bill up, $5-10 for a router is an easy gain

2. Control. Companies like comcast have lots of control over the endpoints to the point where they can manipulate the firmware do do what ever they need for traffic management or even offer public wifi access to all your neighbors...

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I don’t disagree with your points 1 and 2, but IME having worked in telecom for more than a decade your point about there being no data to back it up is wrong. Probably no data that you have been privy to, yes. Your lack of exposure to data does not equate to a lack of data. IME, internal analysis of trouble tickets along with unit cost is driving most moves by an ISP to make installation and usability simple, automated, and specifically not result in support calls. Remember that 90+% of their customers have the expectation that it just works like a power utility and buy their kids’ gaming machines from Costco and Walmart. They really don’t care about config customization and prioritize the assumption that it “just works” far above their flexibility to load custom firmware.

1 really doesn’t hold water. Some ISPs in the US still waive the fee if you don’t rent equipment, so that doesnt really strengthen the argument. I now have an ISP that doesn’t waive the fee but that doesn’t matter either, since it is not optional it is just part of the total sunk cost. I still use my own router.

Your whole argument doesn’t hold water because even with Comcast you can bring your own equipment. They don’t go out of their way to help you... but they don’t stop you either. Don’t see how that is “control”.

Maybe you will not call tech support when your own equipment fails but you clearly have no experience in a support role if you think other people won’t!

Just spend some time on GitHub issues for more popular open source projects to get an idea, and the multiply that by at least 10 for the general public.

Both Comcast and my current ISP both simply refuse to assist if you do not have their equipment. I have experiences both "Please hook up your ISP provided router and if you are still experiencing problems please call back"

Hell half the time they do not even help when you do have their equipment. It took me 3 months of calling support before my current ISP agreed to send a tech to look at my ONT that was clearly resetting itself, Tech replaced the ONT has not had any problems since.

ISP, all ISP's, customer service is terrible, there is not a ISP on the planet that has good service. Or atleast in the US

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