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Belgium commits to Router Freedom

HairyLeg

ULTIMATE Member
The Belgian telecom regulator BIPT formally introduced Router Freedom. The decision encompasses all network types including fiber (FTTx) and the decision sets a deadline of twelve months for becoming compliant. The FSFE acknowledges this decision as a major win for consumer rights, and will monitor further implementation.


Router Freedom is the right that customers of any Internet Service Provider (ISP) are able to choose and use a private modem and router instead of equipment provided by the operator. This freedom has direct impact on consumer welfare, device security, and sustainability in the telecom sector. In a decision published on October 2023, the Belgian telecom regulator BIPT formally introduced Router Freedom nation wide, applying this right to all network types, including fiber (FTTx).
 
I believe we have something similar in UK law for this type of thing in regards to routers not ONTs though. Some altnets do try to restrict you though and BT if you have their VoIP service
 
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Most UK ISPs do not inhibit the use of your own router particularly as they support customer equipment on their business products. Instead they rely on "don't call us if it doesn't work" or additional proprietary products that your router couldn't support anyway..

Now the DSL woes are diminishing the routers currently supplied by the main ISPs are pretty good and naturally we have different generations on each of them. My view is that unless you are going really high end why would you pay out for a router that (if the same generation is compared) the ISP router comes "free" with their service.

For the vast majority of consumers it is best for them to keep to their ISP router for support when things go wrong.

ISP routers that are provided as a combined ONT/Modem unit should have a accessible Bridge mode.

Ecologically we are throwing a lot of perfectly good kit away fuelled by the lack of loyal customer discounts resulting in us having to change ISP every 18 or 24 months. But if the politicians tried to force open routers and their reuse between networks/ISPs they will probably defeat the object by forcing us all onto new routers, scrap all the old ones and lock us into some dinosaur standard.

I think we already have sufficient freedom of choosing our ISP (most of us) and whatever kit we want to spend our money on.
 
Hi,

I initially though that router freedom was freedom from needing one and consequently thought that the article was going to be a lot more interesting than it was. It is not clear to me why we have routers any more.

For most households all the routing functions provided by a router could be provided at the ISP end of the link such that all the end user would need would be an access point and/or a network switch.

Of course, it would require wholesalers and ISPs to move to a fully VLAN (rather than PPP) based aggregation architecture but that is the direction of travel anyway.
 
I'd agree with what others have said. Those who want to use their own equipment can largely already do so, and the things you can't change are the things you should not be touching anyway - eg ONTs on a PON network or its copper equivalent of cable modems on Virgin where you can cause real damage.

Unlike some countries (such as the US), no major ISP charges for router rental nor provides a discount so that's not an angle either.

Ecologically we are throwing a lot of perfectly good kit away
I believe all the major ISPs have moved to a rental model now, and refurbish anything that could be reissued to another customer

For most households all the routing functions provided by a router could be provided at the ISP end of the link such that all the end user would need would be an access point and/or a network switch.
I think AT&T were trying to do exactly that, but they still continue to issue traditional equipment.

Doing that on a large scale would likely be quite resource intensive (and sort of undermines any attempt at decentralising their networks), and there's no money to be saved since you still need a box to terminate the connection and handle WiFi, VoIP etc.
 
Most UK ISPs do not inhibit the use of your own router particularly as they support customer equipment on their business products.
The article specifically states <router AND modem>

Quote:
Router Freedom is the right that customers of any Internet Service Provider (ISP) are able to choose and use a private modem and router instead of equipment provided by the operator.
Instead they rely on "don't call us if it doesn't work" or additional proprietary products that your router couldn't support anyway..
<Don't ask, don't tell> is about as far from a Telecom regulator mandated order as is possible to imagine..

Now the DSL woes are diminishing the routers currently supplied by the main ISPs are pretty good and naturally we have different generations on each of them.
That's one opinion, many people I suspect would disagree with you..

My view is that unless you are going really high end why would you pay out for a router that (if the same generation is compared) the ISP router comes "free" with their service.
Nothing is ever <free> the cost of the equipment is factored into your service contract/subscription. You may not want or use it, but you're definitely paying for it, there's just no line item on your monthly bill.

For the vast majority of consumers it is best for them to keep to their ISP router for support when things go wrong.
I think you missed the whole point of pro-consumer regulations like this one. This puts the onus back onto the ISP to support open standards which will likely mean they will need to provide support pages and setup information for a wide range of equipment, not just the <piece of sh*t> equipment they fob of on the customers today.

It's a excellent piece of pro consumer legislation and will be interesting to see how it pans out. Don't hold your breath that something similar will ever happen in the UK as the regulators here work for the industries they regulate not the consumers they provide the service for.
 
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Sending every DNS and DHCP request over the wire to a virtualised CPE that your ISP hosts is going to perform worse than running those services on a little box sat in the corner of your house. The hardware that you'd end up deploying would look very similar to the heavily integrated boxes that ISPs hand out at the moment, probably using the same chips just with some ports bridge together instead of routed/NATed. I can't see the point in doing it really.

Having a router that is provisioned by your ISP and managed from their portal so you can factory default it or upgrade the hardware and don't have to reconfigure SSIDs, firewall rules etc. I could see the value in.
 
It would be good if you could change the virgin media router. But it requires an encrypted config and matching MAC address so without virgin's help, you cannot replace the router. The hub 4 and lower are utter rubbish.
 
Sending every DNS and DHCP request over the wire to a virtualised CPE that your ISP hosts is going to perform worse than running those services on a little box sat in the corner of your house. The hardware that you'd end up deploying would look very similar to the heavily integrated boxes that ISPs hand out at the moment, probably using the same chips just with some ports bridge together instead of routed/NATed. I can't see the point in doing it really.

Having a router that is provisioned by your ISP and managed from their portal so you can factory default it or upgrade the hardware and don't have to reconfigure SSIDs, firewall rules etc. I could see the value in.
Wut?

This link might help your understanding..

However, many ISP across Europe do not comply with the regulation yet, imposing their own routers to consumers in a clearly contradiction with the Net Neutrality principle. Their argumentation concerns the location of the network termination point (NTP), an arbitrary definition between the limits of the user’s private and ISP’s network equipment. They introduced a debate to determine whether the NTP would be located inside the end-user domain, so they can use their own modem and router, or the NTP would be part of the domain of the network operator, so end-users cannot use their own router with a private modem. In this case, the users should use the ISP's router.

Suspect what will happen is that Belgium ISP's will offer a choice of *recommended* equipment at different price points with different features (eg. with wifi/without wifi) allowing the customer to choose what suits their specific requirements while satisfying the regulator..

 
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The EU mandated router freedom in 2015, but with Brexit means Brexit Stagnation I can't see this happen in the UK any time soon.

In Germany legislation on router freedom for cable, DSL (ADSL/FTTC) and FTTP has been in place since August 2016 although there has been a recent attempt by providers to reverse this for FTTP.
 
Greece and the local "ofcom" mandated the same 6 months ago as some friends of mine told me... but ISP are giving them the finger...
 
Greece and the local "ofcom" mandated the same 6 months ago as some friends of mine told me... but ISP are giving them the finger...
Second link posted above shows the regulatory status of each European country, click on the coloured square and you see where what progress towards router freedom has happened..

Screenshot_20231119_212622.webp


Only Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Lithuania and now Belgium have progressed to <true> router freedom as defined by FSFE
 
It would be good if you could change the virgin media router. But it requires an encrypted config and matching MAC address so without virgin's help, you cannot replace the router. The hub 4 and lower are utter rubbish.
VM's solution is likely the best one. Enforced compatible modem with ability to use modem mode.

Openreach have had issues because of their policy of allowing people to use their own modem's e.g. think why ECI still does not have G.INP rolled out.

If I remember right ASUS DSL modems allow people to mess with power cutback on the VDSL upstream which is not a good thing at all.
 
VM would potentially have to provide standalone modems again, and allow customers to bring their own.

The customers would then have to give up control of those devices to VM as VM will control the firmware updates and configurations on them 👌

Combined hubs VM control the cable side, customer the LAN/WiFi.

VM would perhaps end up with a list of approved modems for certain tiers as some simply aren't capable of higher speeds.

Customer bringing modem at their own risks. It doesn't work very well that's the customer's problem. Should be compatible, in theory, but may perform poorly, crash, etc.

Same kinda story with FTTP. Expensive for FTTP ISPs as they have to get their OLT manufacturers to give them compatible profiles for ONUs that don't match the ONT.
 
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