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Verizon Begins Charging a Fee Just to Use an Older Router (dslreports.com)
Karl Bode, reporting for DSLReports: Several users have written in to note that Verizon has informed them the company will begin charging FiOS customers with an older router a new "Router Maintenance Charge." An e-mail being sent to many Verizon FiOS customers says that the fee of $2.80 will soon be charged every month -- unless users pay Verizon to get a more recent iteration of its FiOS gateway and router. Since Verizon FiOS often uses a MOCA coax connection and the gateway is needed for Verizon TV, many FiOS users don't have the ability to swap out gear as easily as with other ISPs. "Our records indicate that you have an older model router that is being discontinued," states the e-mail. "If you do plan to keep using your current router, we will begin billing, on 9.29.16, a monthly Router Maintenance Charge of $2.80 (plus taxes), to ensure we deliver the best support."
Wrong Word.
The correct words are "Franchise Agreements". And those are granted by your local municipality. Stop blaming businesses for corrupting your local mayors and council critters.
The problem is easily solvable, because it is a problem of the "last mile" and a simple bond measure would solve it. Issue bonds to build out Conduit pathways to all city dwellings and commercial buildings. Pull fiber to each house, back to a single (or more) COLO facility. Offer any/all providers a spot in said COLO facility to offer whatever they want, to any/all of the people hanging on the other end of all that fiber.
1) Competition will create lower prices
2) Competition will create additional options (a la carte??)
3) Competition isn't for last mile, it is for service.
IF you are pissed at your options, make this proposal to your City council next time the Franchise Agreements come up for renewal. MAKE them work for you, they are your Public Servants (or should be)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
That's what happened to me. When I bought my house ~10 years ago, I made a point of adding a contingency for DSL availability (because I didn't want to get stuck with Comcast).
It turns out, both of my immediate neighbors to my left and right had DSL, but AT&T wouldn't let ME sign up because their DSLAM was maxed out, and they weren't going to expand it. For a year and a half, literally the only way to get DSL was to call them and be lucky enough to grab the slot recently opened up by someone (they didn't have a waiting list, either).
The two years I was forced to endure Comcast were MISERABLE. Their service went down AT LEAST 2 or 3 times per week. I was working from home, so when it happened... I noticed immediately. Basically, their installers would disconnect trunk cables when doing new installations & take everyone downstream from that node offline, because at that point they still had the mentality of "TV provider" instead of "five-nines network service provider".
The worst part about it is, if I called Comcast to report the outage (and implicitly, to bitch at them for going down yet again), they INSISTED upon wasting my time making me reboot my computer and other troubleshooting steps, even though they could have known within a matter of seconds whether my cable modem was even reachable. They basically treated service outages like a state secret, and bent over backwards to not admit there was one in my neighborhood, even when they knew DAMN WELL that the problem was somewhere upstream from my cable modem. And Comcast STILL doesn't seem to understand why I passionately hate them so much, and refuse to talk to their salespeople.
I received one of these emails from Verizon, which for $59.99 "is a great opportunity to enhance your Fios experience with faster Wi-Fi speeds."
It isn't so much the money or speed I worry about as the ability to control the router's advanced settings for server ports, etc. that I have now in the "old" router.
I couldn't find any detailed information about the new router. I am seriously worried that the advanced settings will be dumbed down or made unavailable, so their outsourced customer service won't have to be concerned with technical stuff and thus require less training. Maybe the monthly fee for the old router is a red flag that this is the case, since they may need customer support with more training. I don't want to buy the new router and then be screwed unless I upgrade to an expensive "business" account. I doubt they will let me go back to the old router.
Does anyone know the specs for the new router?