“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” By Edmund Burke
Prior to 1982, practically all telephones were produced by one company, Western Electric, and it happens to be owned by AT&T. You had to lease the clunky telephones from your local telephone company which was also owned by AT&T because no one else produced or sold telephones. There was no competition for telephone equipment and so everyone was stuck having to pay a monthly fee to use a telephone that was featureless and built like a tank. This was a perpetual fee as long as you had telephone service. So you can imagine people probably made payments that well exceeded the cost of purchasing the telephone.
Jump ahead 35+ years and a lot of people are still falling for the same scheme with their Internet service provider. CenturyLink, Comcast, and even Longmont NextLight will be more than happy to provide you with their equipment for a monthly fee. However, unlike prior to 1982, you do have a choice to purchase your own modems (DSL & cable) and routers and avoid paying the monthly fee. Purchasing your own equipment not only saves you money, but it also gives you choices of better products than the ones you get from your service provider.
When was the last time you hear of a service provider voluntarily upgrade their leased equipment? Why should they since more money are made by charging for outdated equipment that has long been paid off. Owning yourequipment makes it easier for you to upgrade any time to take advantage of technology changes. Replacing a DSL or cable leased equipment is fairly easy since it is mainly plug-n-play. This is not the case with NextLight because their router or wireless gateway is combined with their fiber modem, which requires specialized skills. So if you lease NextLight’s equipment and at a later time decide to purchase your own, you would have to put in a service call to have Nextlight replace their combination router modem with their standalone modem (currently free) to avoid being charged for the leased equipment.
Go ahead and stop the madness and save yourself the $5-$10 monthly fee by declining or turning in your service provider leased equipment. Then check out our Recommended Routers. If you are not comfortable selecting and installing your own equipment, then 802.Tech4U would love to be of assistance. We work for you and not the service providers.