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Network The Almighty Buck The Internet Wireless Networking

Router and Modem Rental Fees Still a Major Annoyance Despite New US Law (arstechnica.com) 34

Posted by BeauHD from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Consumer Reports wants the Federal Communications Commission to take a closer look at whether Internet service providers are complying with a US law that prohibits them from charging hardware rental fees when customers use their own equipment. In a filing submitted to the FCC this week, Consumer Reports said it asked members about their Internet bills and got over 350 responses, with some suggesting violations of either the letter or spirit of the law. "Some contain allegations that the law is being violated, whereas others state the new statute is being respected. Many more stories suggest that ISPs dissuade consumers from using their own equipment, typically by refusing to troubleshoot any service disruptions if consumers opt not to rent the ISP's devices. Such practices result in de facto situations where consumers feel pressured or forced to rent equipment that they would prefer to own instead," Consumer Reports told the FCC.

Consumer Reports' filing came in response to the FCC asking for public comment on the implementation of the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA), which took effect in December 2020. In addition to price-transparency rules for TV service, the law prohibited TV and broadband providers from charging rental or lease fees when "the provider has not provided the equipment to the consumer; or the consumer has returned the equipment to the provider." All the comments collected by Consumer Reports are available here. The FCC filing includes examples of complaints about AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Charter Spectrum, Frontier, Windstream, and Cox, though the complaints weren't all about rental fees.

In its call for public input, the FCC asked for comment on "the extent to which (if at all) subject entities continue to assess charges for equipment that are expressly prohibited by the statute." [...] Consumer Reports said its questions for members were "designed to measure whether or not ISPs were in compliance... and also to solicit consumer opinion on whether or not it was difficult to use consumer-owned equipment versus renting those devices from the provider. Notably, neither of the two cable industry trade associations mentioned this issue in any detail in their comments filed last month at the Commission." Consumer Reports said that some of the responses "suggest the statute is not being complied with as vigorously as Congress intended... These allegations merit further investigation by the Commission." Consumer Reports offered to share contact information for the customers with the FCC so it can investigate further.
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Router and Modem Rental Fees Still a Major Annoyance Despite New US Law More

Router and Modem Rental Fees Still a Major Annoyance Despite New US Law

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  • Another way to get around it is design the system so 3rd party equipment won't work. ATT does that with their gateway - you can use a 3rd party router but still need teh gateway t get service via fiber.
    • GPON ONTs exist in various forms. You can get separate devices, SFP modules and routers with integrated GPON interface. There is no reason the service should only work with the provider-supplied ONT. If there is a rental fee, it's almost certainly cheaper to buy your own. GPON ONTs are not specialty devices. They are mass-produced and cheap. For example, the suggested retail price of Ubiquiti's UFiber Loco is $49, and that's not the low end.
      • I think the OP may have not had it quite right. I used to have Sonic as my ISP, but they leased the actual fiber from AT&T. AT&T provided their own router that used 802.1X, so you had to use it. (Since Sonic was my actual ISP, I didn't get charged for the device, at least not as a separate line-item.) The device had crappy WiFi, so I switched it off and plugged in my own access point.

        Eventually, Sonic built out their own fiber network which I'm now using. They offered to let me rent an Eero, but t

  • You can't just "vote with your dollars" by "going to another service provider if the current doesn't give you what you legally should have"
    Omaha, NE for example. Your choise is either Cox Communications, or CenturyLink DSL or psuedo-fiber (if your neighborhood even has that).

    You can't just find another ISP. Your "Other" ISP is likely a 5GB/mo hotspot through Verizon Wireless @ $79.99/mo or to put up with the Duopoly. And the City council is corrupt. They negotiated the next 20 years power/telephone pole r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Starlink is becoming a 3rd option in most areas, but you'll have to purchase a dish from them to make that option work. It's still better than only having The Cable Company and The Phone Company to choose from, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by uncqual ( 836337 )

        Starlink will be an interesting option for some - esp. those in rural areas.

        However, it seems likely that in congested areas where people have only one high speed broadband provider option that Starlink may not be a viable option due to shared bandwidth issues. We don't know how, ultimately, SpaceX will ration this limited shared bandwidth to such areas -- perhaps by charging a very high price to squelch demand, perhaps by only offering the service to addresses that, for odd reasons, don't have any other hi

    • Omaha, NE for example. Your choise is either Cox Communications, or CenturyLink DSL or psuedo-fiber (if your neighborhood even has that).

      Its the same here in Las Vegas, your only viable choice is Cox or CenturyLink. I'm stuck with Cox preferred (150/10mbps) at $88/mo. At my address, all I can get with CL is 10mbps DSL, however, a friend of mine who lives 4 blocks south of me, called me one day a few months ago and told me he'd just dumped Cox for CL and he got fiber (100/100) at their $49/mo "lifetime" price. I immediately called CL, thinking they'd finally "fiberized" this neighborhood. Alas, it was not to be, the website and a call to them

  • Sure you can go buy a cable modem, even one that is "supported" by the cable company. But they will refuse to support it in any way. If something doesn't work, they'll just say "we don't support using your own equipment." My neighbor tried to use her own cable modem with AT&T, and ended up paying the monthly rental of $15 every month anyway, because they simply would not supply the information needed to make it work.

    • Not that ATT cares but they can mention that is illegal under the 2019 Television Viewer Protection Act. It's been legal to use your own equipment for awhile under the previous law that allowed TiVo to work and implemented CableCard but the 2019 law put restrictions on how and when fees can be charged for equipment the customer owns.

      • It may be legal to use your own equipment, but they have no legal requirement for them to help you do so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by uncqual ( 836337 )

          And certainly they have the right to charge for troubleshooting if the troubleshooting either reveals that the problem is your equipment or if your equipment makes it harder for some reason for them to troubleshoot the problem even though the root cause is theirs.

          This is what keeps me from buying rather than renting. We have had several problems over the years with Xfinity's cabling (the part outside the home that they are responsible for). These problems have been intermittent - ten minutes here, ten minut

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            This is incredibly common in cable modem service. Not your exact 'morning sun' cable issue, but cabling issues upstream causing lots of issues.

            Mine - intermittent packet loss sporadically throughout the day but especially in afternoons/evenings. The interior wiring is a single, un-split home run to my cable modem installed by the cable company when the house was renovated a few months prior to move-in. They came out 3 different times and hemmed and hawed over it trying to insist it was OK. Finally got s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Not that ATT cares but they can mention that is illegal under the 2019 Television Viewer Protection Act. It's been legal to use your own equipment for awhile under the previous law that allowed TiVo to work and implemented CableCard but the 2019 law put restrictions on how and when fees can be charged for equipment the customer owns.

        Comcast does the same thing if you have static IPs. They won't let you provide your own router, even though the one they provide is an unreliable piece of s**t, because they designed the system to require the router to advertise its IP addresses upstream using authenticated RIP (RIPv2), and even if you can get your CSR to give you the key, it changes frequently (like daily or weekly), so you'll have service for only a few days before you lose service again.

        There is, of course, no sane reason for any of thi

        • All correct. Attempting to pre-ban all the ways of them getting around the law's implementation is a losing option. Lawyers and such are made for that.

          The only way around it is either real action competition or municipal operated.

          But see the lawyers point above.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            All correct. Attempting to pre-ban all the ways of them getting around the law's implementation is a losing option. Lawyers and such are made for that.

            The only way around it is either real action competition or municipal operated.

            No, there's another way to solve at least this part of the problem. Use antitrust law to sue the monopolist for using their regional monopoly in one area (Internet service) to give them a regional monopoly in another area (cable modem sales). But that requires having DAs and AGs willing to go after these scumbag corporate offenders, which most are not.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Agree 100%. I'm recently deployed BYO cable modems on both Comcast and Spectrum. Just stick to the approved list of current DOCSIS 3.1 modems (I chose the Motorola MB8611) and it's easy to get up and running in less than 1/2 hour.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Burdell ( 228580 )

        My experience with Comcast (several years old now) was that they run a pretty top-notch network from a technical aspect. Use your own modem with no problem, get IPv6 support, they do DNSSEC on their resolvers (I think the first large-scale US network to do so), etc. The evil side is business/management.

        I'm on Google Fiber now - they initially didn't really "support" using your own router, but they didn't block it (the necessary config info was available). Later they added a button to remove the extra config

  • To be fair, if you own your own router, the crack tech from Hyderabad cannot attempt to troubleshoot your connection failure over the phone, and they have to send a more expensive in-person repairman out.

    We have the freedom of choice between two hardwired internet providers, and even a couple of satellite companies who deliver 90's dialup speeds, but they all over promise and under deliver.

    The takeaway? Smells like Freedom. You may choose your own suck.

  • forced fees need to = MUST BE PART OF BASE PRICE.
    and for Comcast that means that unlimited add on must be like $15/mo or less of people with there own modem and not $50/mo as with comcasts rented one it's like $15-$20/mo for rent + unlimited.

  • with regard to their contracts - such as ending it and forcing you on to another one without even asking. Making sure there is plenty of legalese to let you know you are most likely not going to get what you paid for (UP TO 900 Mbps down, UP TO 25 Mbps up - reality fluctuates wildly but I've NEVER seen 900 Mbps and my cable modem could support more and 25 is often 6).

    But, I have used my own cable modem for a long time without issue on that part. There were a number of years prior to this though that they

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I had Verizon FIOS and argued with them over their equipment fees and dumbass router for years; I even had a tech argue with me one time that turning off the wifi in their router would be 'bad.'

    When the law changed Verizon had already sold out to Frontier and they happily said that I needed their POS router which was still the same crap that I had with Verizon. I told them to tell me where to send it and after three call escalations to sales retainer specialists, they finally relented. Ever since it hast sa

  • Unfortunately I am forced to use Comcast as it is the only provider where I live (except for satellite and cell). They offer a discount for using their equipment. Digging into the why is that it would provide an access point for other Comcast customers to connect and use. I think it is worth it to not take the discount and not user their equipment.
  • It's really unclear why the US legal system is written so poorly that blatantly fraudulent charges are simply tolerated, and need new laws to ban. We should really be banning spaces of exploitation, instead of points

  • I am quite fed up with this personally. I have static IP addresses and Comcast / XFinitiy, and they refuse to allow me to "bring my own equipment" despite the very clear law on the subject (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_Protection_and_Net_Neutrality_Act_of_2018)

    I am very interested in starting a class action lawsuit about this.

    Do we have a case? Anyone with me?

    Any zealous net-neutrality savvy attorneys in the audience?

  • For a brief time about 5 years ago, DSLExtreme in California allowed one to buy the equipment and to avoid paying the rental fee. Since then, AT&T has forced DSLE to change this policy, and I am paying an extra $10 a month as a result. (It's still somehow cheaper than buying the service directly through AT&T. Go figure.)

    Spectrum has done the same thing. I recall signing up for 20 Mbps service back in 2010 for $25 a month and getting a $5 monthly discount for using my own cable modem. The following y

  • Following the links on /. I arrived at the following as the law in question: https://www.congress.gov/116/b... [congress.gov] It seems as if it applies to TV providers. So, those of us who have internet service only are not covered, it would seem. Clarification anyone?

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    The AT&T U-Verse Fiber gateways/routers from Pace and other newer vendors use the industry standard 802.1x EAPoL Encryption certificates to authenticate the gateways/routers before the network allows the devices to send any traffic. Those certificates are loaded to the device by the provider to authenticate the devices to the network. If you provide your own device it won't work without those certificates loaded. Also, if you try to purchase a old AT&T device from

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