I suspect this will change, or not roll out in many places, or users will get the choice between up-front or rental. Router rental isn't tolerated by the market in the UK or AU from what I've seen.
This might be reflected in upcoming metrics reported on Friday if the IPO goes through. It seems aligned with improving subscriber growth metrics, smoothing out upfront hardware costs into predictable monthly revenue, and generally increasing adoption by lowering the barrier to entry. Curious if anyone closely following the IPO story has more context on this.
I bring my own modem/router and access point and pay my ISP $35/month for 1Gb up/down. Why would I pay $10 forever when I can bring my own equipment that is much better and fully controlled by me?
I'm just even more mad, because it means folks will be so so much less Right to Repair, Right to Tinker, about this property they no longer can own.
If you break it, then what do you pay? But what if you fix it after? Oh sorry, that device has been deactivated forever, of course of course of course.
Nightmare hell mode from such an evil evil evil murderous inflaming (literally, last night) chainsaw wielding government (DOGE) & person murdering (USAID) man. You will own nothing intensifies.
They're becoming just another shitty ISP. Just a few months ago they offered me a Mini for no monthly cost, as long as I kept a service plan on it. Standby mode was $5/mo. I was looking forward to using it this summer, and activating a roam plan for a few months.
3 months later, standby mode goes up to $10/mo and they jacked up my regular rates again to $120/mo. I sent the fucking mini back. Talk about bait and switch.
So then I heard they came up with this 200mbit plan that was only $85/mo. I have a gen 1 dish, which can only do about 140mbits anyways. So why am I even on this fucking 'max' plan? But the cheaper plans are "not available in my area". I'm guessing that's because I have no other options in my area.
I keep getting offers for $50/mo for service but my area is considered a premium market or something and they want $500 up front for the service (nothing to do with the hardware)
I live in suburbs. They obviously know I have cable and other options so gouge me if I want them.
I was going to go with $50/mo with the free hardware and keep it for backup when primary goes down. But not with that much commitment and no guarantees. They’ve already bumped the standby price (for no usage) to $10/mo on the mini
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 48.1 ms ] threadWow, get fucked!
If you break it, then what do you pay? But what if you fix it after? Oh sorry, that device has been deactivated forever, of course of course of course.
Nightmare hell mode from such an evil evil evil murderous inflaming (literally, last night) chainsaw wielding government (DOGE) & person murdering (USAID) man. You will own nothing intensifies.
3 months later, standby mode goes up to $10/mo and they jacked up my regular rates again to $120/mo. I sent the fucking mini back. Talk about bait and switch.
So then I heard they came up with this 200mbit plan that was only $85/mo. I have a gen 1 dish, which can only do about 140mbits anyways. So why am I even on this fucking 'max' plan? But the cheaper plans are "not available in my area". I'm guessing that's because I have no other options in my area.
I live in suburbs. They obviously know I have cable and other options so gouge me if I want them.
I was going to go with $50/mo with the free hardware and keep it for backup when primary goes down. But not with that much commitment and no guarantees. They’ve already bumped the standby price (for no usage) to $10/mo on the mini