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:gigachad-hd: Fiber Optic gang.
Also :what-the-hell: a modem with a fan? :whywhywhywhywhy: There are whole ass fanless PCs out there but they can't cool down a modem without a fan?
I've had fiber at three places now and been provided a modem at every one. At least they don't upcharge for it. One of them also gave me a router/WiFi unit when I asked them not to, never billed me for it, and I've had it for like 3 years now gathering dust in case they come at me for it.
I wish I could fucking get fiber.
I've never been able to afford a nice place and I swear to god they only offer it to nice neighborhoods. My friend two streets over in the nice neighborhood has no trouble getting fiber service though. It's even more infuriating because he pays less for fiber than I do for my shitty connection.
From what I've heard, this is a problem that once again comes down to landlords. I've heard from people that looked into it and found that apartment buildings around them had been hooked up, and it was only their building in the area that had been left out. Turns out some landlords try to profit from this by demanding money from ISPs in order to allow them to hook up units in their buildings. (Like telling Verizon they can wire the building only if they pay the landlord $1k per unit to do so).
This was a few years back, so I don't know if it's still a problem, but it was the source of complaints during the Fios rollout.
Hmm, in Australia they seem to send me a new modem whenever I move to an new place. idek if there's an option to stop getting them, they never ask for them back, I have so many modems :(
Even in the US, some ISPs will set up a modem and router, and the modem's free but you'd be charged a monthly fee for the router. In that case, you just need to get your own router.
The box the company gave me was a router/modem combo, so I needed to get a router as well. I'm sure you're aware, but to be clear just getting a modem isn't enough if you want wifi. It's still worth it long-term.
totally. I used to work in telecom and the "equipment rental fee" is such a scam. $120+/yr for the biggest piece of shit modem they have a warehouse full of.
it could almost be justifiable if they supplied you with a really good one, but of course they give you some bulk bargain bin negotiated by the ton for some $7 dog shit in a plastic box.
There aren't really crappy versus good modems. If it works at the speed it's supposed to work at (and maybe doesn't have a loud fan), it works fine, since that's it's entire job.
I worked in CPE support/data repair for some years.
there are shit modems. they come with shit configs that shit the bed and require consistent powercycling. they have shit support from shit manufacturers and the chances of them ever being reliable are shit. eventually they shit the bed completely and have to be replaced. hopefully not with the exact same piece of shit.
lol now that you mention it I did pass on getting a modem that people complained would stop working after some number of hour.
haha, when you open up 100 tickets a day and like every one where the customer with the "new" POS modem--that some jagoff VP got a bulk deal on buying 10,000 off the grey market--is having these intermittent connectivity issues, but you're not allowed to log it in the notes as "customer has the shitty new modem we provide at install now, so I replaced it with one of a good ones we used to provide", it becomes liberating to say some shit sucks.
I always use my own. That’s good advice.
Anything that you have to rent monthly, always look into replacing it with something that you own. Renting is always theft.
Um what? Isn’t the modem given by the company you get your internet from?
Wdym????
Wait I’m paying for the modem? I thought it was free with the internet plan? Will my plan be cheaper if I get a modem separately and return theirs?
Yeah I just checked and I’m paying $10 a month for it. How much would a good modem cost?
I think Spectrum gives you the modem for free, and charges you a monthly fee for the router. They never asked for it back, so I still have their modem lying around somewhere.
The rented routers are even worse than they seem, because they often reappropriate the guest wifi in order to transmit their SpectrumFreeWifi or whatever the ISP calls it when they provide free wifi coverage to customers across cities. Since most customers don't know that their rented router is providing a separate wifi signal to people nearby, the number of wifi signals in a given location is doubled, with half of them requiring login via an ISP to use.
Some places literally won’t let you. The place I stay now only uses their own router and when I asked about it the best I could do was put it in line and treat it as another wap that would ultimately go through their router.
I did a bunch of research at the time about other people using this same isp and ended up realizing there wasn’t much I could do and just dealt with it and got a vpn. Bc of the way isp’s carve up the city into fiefdoms I can’t go with anyone else and get actually high speed Internet. But I had always used my own router up to this point
e: this isnt to detract from your post btw i fully agree i really just wanted to complain about my shitty isp lol
You can sometimes call and disable the router functionality in the provided modem-router combo.
I tried they basically told me it can’t function without their proprietary shit (obv Bs but they wouldn’t budge). I spent a month on it. It’s still a good 50 bucks cheaper than my last isp which I did have my own router for so I just deal
Be prepared for your ISP's tech support to be confused by it if you need to call them — apparently a modem I had was the same kind my ISP used to rent out, so they kept trying to tell me it was end-of-life even though I'd just got it. I had to explain it was mine and not a rental every time I called
The last time I had an ISP hook me up with a new connection, I made it very clear I did not want the provider's router, as I already have my own. That was fine, but the technician accidentally left the box with the router in my apartment, which I didn't notice until he was long gone. After about a year of holding onto this box I figured maybe I can put custom firmware on it and get some mileage out of an extra device, but no. This shit's locked down.
I have never before heard of charging per month for a router, but 13.99 is actually insane. Honestly a $20 one will function well, and at higher speeds than you'll ever likely use.
It's one of many scams that US telecoms use to squeeze more blood out of the stone.
