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Are You Paying More for Internet Than You Have To? Try Buying Your Own Router [CNET]
Equipment fees and the policies that come with them vary from provider to provider. Some charge $15 or more per month for the use of the company equipment, while others let you lease the required equipment for free. A few providers require you to use their equipment — meaning that you can’t skip the fee by using your own — but most are happy to let you use your own gear and save a few bucks each month provided your modem or router is compatible with the internet service.
Doing so is usually a smart move. For instance, plenty of decent modems cost less than $100. With the average cost of renting a modem from your provider sitting at around $10 per month, a device like that would pay for itself in less than a year and then continue saving you money each month after that. In other cases, where providers will rent you a high-end gaming router or a decent mesh router for a modest monthly fee, doing so might be a pretty decent deal.
For more tips on getting the most out of your internet connection, check whether your internet service provider is throttling your Wi-Fi connection and learn if you’re putting your router in the wrong spot.
Let’s run through all of the top options from internet providers to see how their equipment policies compare and whether or not you’re in a position to save some money.
Equipment fee: No
Astound Broadband offers home internet service in several large metros across the country — including Austin, Chicago, Houston, New York and Seattle — and the modem and router rental are now included in your monthly fee.
You can still skip using Astound’s equipment and use your own (here’s Astound’s list of approved modems). It’s worth noting that Astound also offers “Enhanced Wi-Fi” in some regions, which gets you a fancier router for an additional $5 per month. In some regions, Enhanced Wi-Fi means that you get the Eero Pro 6 mesh router, which is excellent, but in others, it’s just the standard Eero 6 router, which wasn’t nearly as strong a performer in my tests.
Customers can also rent the Netgear Nighthawk XR1000 Wi-Fi 6 gaming router for $13 per month, which isn’t a bad deal at all, given that it usually costs around $300.
Equipment fee: No
This is significant because up until early 2022, AT&T charged $10 per month for its equipment. The company required the use of its combination modem-and-router gateway device and didn’t allow customers to use their own modem. That meant that you couldn’t skip the $10 monthly additional fee. AT&T scrapped its equipment fee, so customers need not worry about that additional amount getting tacked onto their monthly bill.
Equipment fee: Yes ($15 per month for modem/router gateway device rental)
Can you skip it? Yes
CenturyLink charges $15 monthly to rent a gateway that combines a modem and a router into one device. If you sign up for DSL with Century Link, that gateway will be one of three models: the Greenwave C4000, the Zyxel C4000LZ or the Zyxel C3000Z. If you have a fiber plan with Quantum Fiber, your equipment is included at no extra cost for an “initial period,” however long that may be. You can skip that $15 fee by using a gateway or modem of your own, but CenturyLink cautions customers not to use anything that isn’t on its list of approved devices.
“CenturyLink highly recommends using one of our certified or recommended Wi-Fi modems (gateways), which have been tested and approved to work optimally with our high-speed internet technology,” the company’s website reads. “Retired and third-party devices are more likely to cause performance issues and may not connect to your internet service correctly.”
Remember, if you’re replacing CenturyLink’s gateway with a standard modem, then you’ll also need to find a good router to go with it.
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