Router and modem rental fees still a major annoyance despite new US law

AT&T router fee draws complaints

One AT&T customer in Austin, Texas, wrote, "AT&T charges a mandatory $10 fee for a router that is required because they will not share the certificate that I need to connect to their fiber network with my own equipment." (Software engineer Nicholas Roth contacted us after publication to let us know that he wrote this complaint about AT&T.)

AT&T in January announced new fiber plans without equipment fees. But the company's fee schedule says, "Certain older AT&T Internet and/or AT&T Fiber plans may include a monthly Equipment Fee of $2, $4, $7 or $10, depending on the plan and date of purchase."

An AT&T customer in Garland, Texas, tried to get out of the $10 equipment charge. "I have called multiple times over the years asking to remove this fee and take their router, just tell me what router model you want me to use and I'll go buy it myself and avoid losing $120/year to this piece of hardware I don't need," the person wrote. "I've begged and asked everything I know to ask, but they said there is absolutely no way to not use their router, as they have some sort of proprietary firmware on it." That customer said AT&T is the only Internet choice "because no one else offers it in our apartment building."

A Comcast customer in New Hope, Pennsylvania, wrote, "We use our own modem and router and have done so for years. We noticed that Comcast was charging us monthly for a modem we did not even have. When brought to their attention, they refused to refund more than the prior three months although they had charged us for years for the modem we never had."

A Windstream customer in Ruidoso, New Mexico, wrote, "I bought my own gateway and returned theirs 1.5 months ago, but we're still being billed for theirs."

Practices may violate “spirit of the law”

Consumer Reports also told the FCC that "tactics reported by some CR members where ISPs allegedly dissuade consumers from using their own equipment for broadband service may not be a direct violation of the law; however, they strike us as running afoul of the spirit of [the] law, which promotes consumer freedom and the choice to not have to rent devices from their ISPs."

One example came from a Cox customer in Omaha, Nebraska. "Cox charges $12 per month for a combined cable modem/router device," the customer wrote. "It is possible to put this in bridge mode to use my own router, but I still have to pay $12 per month for the cable modem function. A person can provide their own cable modem, but Cox will blame the customer-owned modem and will not support it if there is any issue of any kind with the Internet service."

One person in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, wrote, "My provider for Internet says you can bring your own router and buy your own but it comes with a lot of warnings [about] how it may not be compatible and you may have difficulty with your Internet service." The provider was not identified.

Charter doesn't charge a separate rental fee for its modem, which isn't necessarily a good thing because it means customers can't lower their monthly bills by purchasing their own device. Charter customers quoted in the Consumer Reports filing complained about a variety of other fees, such as $5 per month for a Wi-Fi router and a Broadcast TV surcharge of $17.99.

Cable lobby filings

The docket in the FCC proceeding only has a few filings. Cable lobby group NCTA focused on its members' compliance with requirements to provide detailed pricing information before customers enter into contracts.

Although the price-transparency provisions only applied to TV service, "some cable operators have chosen to go beyond the requirements of the TVPA and provide similar information for all services the consumer purchases, not just video service," NCTA said. A lobby group for smaller cable providers said that "truth-in-billing requirements have been fully incorporated into their business operations," with cable companies having made "extensive changes to their systems and practices that were necessary to meet the requirements."

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.