YouGov Survey Claims to Find High Level of Trust in European Routers
A new YouGov survey of 5,209 participants from the UK, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Italy, which was conducted during August 2025 and commissioned by FRITZ! (somewhat of a vested interest), claims to have found that users regard European brands of broadband router as the “most trustworthy“.
According to the results, only 10% of respondents said they distrust European router manufacturers, which compares well with 48% for Chinese and 55% for Russian brands. Almost all participants also named reliability, speed and security as the most important purchase criteria.
However, this is hardly a surprising outcome and if Chinese respondents were, for example, asked the same question, then they’d probably trust their own brands more. Curiously, there’s no mention in the press release of the USA (Cisco, Netgear, eero etc.) or Taiwan (e.g. ASUS, D-Link etc.), which are home to many key router brands.
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In addition to features such as Wi-Fi coverage and speed, consumers in the UK and Europe also placed great importance on aspects like security (e.g. a powerful firewall or encryption), reliability, or price, performance, and service. Over 90% of all participants rated these aspects as important or very important.
The above is relevant as the EU is currently meeting in Berlin to find ways for how Europe can become less reliant on tech giants from the US and China.
Jan Oetjen, CEO of FRITZ!, said:
“The security of routers is directly linked to digital sovereignty in Europe. An increasing amount of sensitive data – from online banking to tax returns – is transmitted via our home network. Compromised routers therefore pose an immense threat, as they can be misused as weapons for cyberattacks and malicious traffic is hardly distinguishable from legitimate traffic. Similar to the decisions made in the 5G sector, we must ensure that our routers are secure and remain in European hands to protect our digital freedom.”
Naturally, no survey commissioned by a party with a vested interest in the outcome would be complete without a bit of self-promotion. Across all countries surveyed, FRITZ!Box routers are separately claimed to have achieved the highest Net Promoter Score (i.e. a gauge of how likely participants are to recommend their router). But no comparative details were provided for rival brands.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I would absolutely never use an ISPs router. For one thing you have no idea what access they or anyone else have to it and more importantly many ISPs can’t be bothered to patch vulnerabilities or problems. I always go with a 3rd party router or a software router. I suppose most people couldn’t care less, but some of us do care about security. I’m personally not a fan of the Frtiz! but I know some places like for example AAISP absolutely love them. I find them overpriced and lacking important features personally
This is quite a simplistic argument. In reality, third party routers have issues of their own (security or otherwise) and it is not necessarily the case that they are better than ISP supplied equipment. It is also the case that some ISPs – though not necessarily all – take more of an interest in what goes into their products than you might imagine.
ISPs have responsibilities under the PSTI including a commitment to updates and security patches. This is why you’ve seen ISPs plead for their customers to accept a free upgrade as they no longer wish to support the hardware that they have.
I always smile when someone complains about their “software or 3rd party router” struggling to get the speeds they pay for due to performance issues with said router, meanwhile a $50 box with a comparatively sluggish ARM chip and hardware acceleration is running rings around it.
Except Fritz and Mikrotik, what other brands are European? I am asking for end user products not enterprise like Ericsson, Nokia etc.
Stick to Openwrt enabled routers.
Yet they are all made, loaded with software and branded as required in China. I think it tells you that some people don’t understand that the brand name is meaningless on these consumer devices.
I use a Teltonika router, designed and made in Lithuania and using customised OpenWRT Linux-based firmware (RutOS). They are primarily aimed at industrial users, so they are rugged and solidly built, with nice aluminium cases. They don’t have all the gimmicky consumer features like “gaming acceleration” and snazzy 3D user interfaces, but they do have solid, powerful, high security features for networking geeks. There are lots of models, with or without Wi-Fi and cellular (i.e. 4G/5G backup capability). We used to use them at work (for actual industrial sites) so I decided to get one for home too!
Similarily Nethsecurity is also OpenWRT based, which is what I have switched to. (runs on X86/X86_64 only for now).
don’t get me wrong PfSense/OPNsense are very very good and very highly regarded but sometimes you really don’t need that deep level of features.