BTW: in the EU there is movement towards mandating ISPs allow BYOD, including fibre ONTs.
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The benefit with an ONT (or even DOCSIS dumb modem) managed by the ISP is that they can do fleet upgrades much quicker as they don't have to keep all old protocols running. For instance the GPON -> XGSPON upgrade that some ISPs are running right now (or DOCSIS 3 upgrade) really only works well if you can turn off the old protocol which requires swapping out all ONTs/DOCSIS modems.
If customers bring their own stuff then you're stuck with these things for much longer.
But in cases where the ONT just looks like a media converter and you have a separate router I really can’t see any reason for the customer to provide their own ONT. Especially given PON is a shared medium so a misbehaving ONT can affect other customers.
I agree, and that is a problem. The rules and regulations are different in different countries. In Austria for instance the ISP can force you to use a specific DOCSIS modem or ONT but they have to provide you with a transparent way to connect to it (bridge mode etc.). Which from where I'm standing is a good tradeoff because it gives the ISP the flexibility to do mass migrations without having to consider very old deployed infrastructure.
With PON I think it doesn't matter all _that_ much but for instance people running ancient DOCSIS modems and limited frequency availability has been a massive pain for people stuck with DOCSIS infrastructure that want more upstream and can't.
Why? There is nothing preventing an ISP from saying that from date X, only protocols A, B and C are supported. If you want to use your own device, make sure it supports these protocols.
In other words, the requirement to allow customers to use their own devices does not mean that they can choose all available protocols. The allowed protocols can still be controlled by the ISPs.
A lot of overhead for ISP support in those cases in which a customer knows they can buy any router with any ONT, plugs it and forgets it without zero knowledge of what a protocol even is.
That's how it works in New Zealand, but we take it a step further. The GPON/XGS-PON fibre network is run by a separate company[0] from the ISPs (and the company running the fibre network is prohibited from providing internet services[1]). So the ONT just functions as a media converter[2], and all our ISPs deliver internet over the same fibre network. This decoupling between the fibre network provider and ISP means you can change ISPs without any swapping of ONTs or repatching of fibre[3][4] (in fact, the process can be entirely automated, switching to some ISPs can take effect within an hour or two of placing the order). That and most ISPs allow bringing your own router (as there's no monopoly in the ISP space).
[0]: The NZ Government contracted four companies to build, own, and run fibre networks (three being new companies co-owned by local lines companies and the government to serving their local area, with the rest of the country being served by Chorus, the company that owns the country's copper network). These fibre companies are heavily regulated (including how much they can charge ISPs).
[1]: In fact, this requirement resulted in Telecom (the company that owned our copper network and who was one of the companies that provided phone and internet service to consumers) being split up, with Chorus being spun off, owning the copper network and owning the fibre network for the majority of the country.
[2]: Chorus did start deploying ONTs with a built-in router/AP a while back. They did offer this to ISPs to use, but uptake was very low, so it's since been discontinued.
[3]: I don't know how it works over in European countries where ISPs run their own fibre networks when switching ISPs, I assume they have to either install their own fibre line into the premises or the existing fibre is repatched to their network?
[4]: The fibre companies are required to offer use of their fibre network directly to ISPs, with the ISPs PON network running in parallel to the fibre company's, with the ISP providing their own fibre splitters and ONTs (which would be run on a second fibre line that each premises already has) and running their own OLTs. I believe this requirement still exists, but no-one ever took them up on it.
If you're paranoid, you may want to run an ONT that you control, just in case. I doubt it's something that matters to a lot of people, but even if it only matters to some, it shouldn't be made impossible for those that want to.
RE: misbehaving hardware: the same is very much true for cable internet and there are plenty of countries where people hook up their own modem without any trouble. If someone wanted to mess with the fiber network they could just disconnect the ONT and shine a laser pointer down there. All off-the-shelf devices are built to just work and follow the necessary standards, because there's nothing to be gained by messing with the PON network like that.
Sure, but so can the other endpoint. Even many AON installations these days are just hidden XPS-PON and similar, you just never see the ONT. (See a lot of ISPs in Switzerland)
There _is_ a reason even legacy cable TV and ancient DOCSIS channels are still being available in many countries because actually retiring a lot of old modems has shown to be risky to the business.
It's like saying that Spotify could suddenly decide to retire support for Android 12 or something. They could, but how many customers are they going to lose and how much support burden is that going to generate?
That's either a horde that understands the issue, or is an even smaller subset that is going to be a pita anyway.
There has not been an official ruling, but that was not necessary because there is a soft commitment by ISPs to provide bridge mode which was enough for the RTR: https://www.rtr.at/TKP/was_wir_tun/telekommunikation/konsume...
But they are very explicit:
> Gleichzeitig gibt es eine gesetzlich garantierte Endgerätefreiheit (Art. 3 Abs. 1 TSM-VO). Auf Grund dieser haben alle Nutzer:innen das Recht, einen Router ihrer Wahl zu verwenden. Stellt der Anbieter einen Router mit integriertem Modem zur Verfügung, muss es möglich sein, diesen Router in den sogenannten "Brigde-Modus" zu schalten.
> Because the Wifi 6 enabled Modem from Magenta doesn't support bridge mode.
It does. Call customer support and they enable it for you. It turns into a dumb modem afterwards behind which you need to put your own infrastructure.
It's also mentioned on their FAQ: https://www.magenta.at/faq/entry/~technische-anfrage~kabelin...
Calix for some reason makes it easy to clone some models.
I have a post on this: https://www.neelc.org/posts/clone-calix-ont/
Now I'm in NYC with Verizon Fios where I don't need a cloned ONT. Woo! The Verizon ONT is big and has a huge power brick, presumably because of RFoG alongside GPON.
JTAG is a much lower level protocol, typically used for hardware or low-level software debugging. Serial/UART gives you a command-line interface to the software that's running.
Using a JTAG interface is a lot more complicated. If you're interested in playing with it, check out OpenOCD.
[0] https://www.swisscom.ch/dam/swisscom/en/ws/documents/E_BBCS-...
[1] https://www.swisscom.ch/content/dam/swisscom/de/ws/documents...
[2] https://en.comparis.ch/telecom/zuhause/angebote/internet-abo
Lumen fortunately moved off these ONTs. However, the new Smart NIDs have their fair share of issues from what I heard. I moved out of Lumen territory so have no experience with them.
But I have read that some other communities that have tried the same model have had trouble attracting ISPs.
My understanding is that the margins on fibre connections for ISPs are quite slim. The three big telcos do both broadband and cellular, and they definitely try and push customers with lighter needs over to wireless internet delivered over 4G or 5G (which has more margins for them). There has been a bit of consolidation among the major players (one of the big telcos (2Degrees, who do both broadband and cellular) merged with one of the big broadband-only telcos (Vocus) a couple of years ago). But there's plenty of smaller ISPs. And a couple of the electricity retailers have gotten in on providing internet as well. And it's not uncommon for local WISPs to offer fibre as well.
Differentiation between ISPs is definitely mainly on cost, quality of support, and bundled services. They all have their own networks (the fibre companies only provide L2 connectivity from the customers to the ISPs), and there can be some differences there. For example, another of the big broadband+cellular telcos (Spark, who was the ISP side of Telecom before they were split up) is the only major ISP that doesn't offer IPv6 and doesn't peer at local peering exchanges.
Some ISPs have cheaper plans with data caps, but many ISPs don't even offer data-capped plans, and everyone offers uncapped plans. Similarly, most ISPs let you use your own router. And about the only variation in how you'd need to configure your router is PPPoE vs IPoE/DHCP and VLAN 10 vs untagged. So you can usually switch ISPs and all you need to do is maybe change your router config.
As a side note, of particular interest to the audience here is the existence of a new-ish residential ISP (Quic) that offers things like static IP for a one-off cost, /28 IPv4 subnets, self-service rDNS management, and self-service access to the ONT status, connection logs, etc. One of the advantages of having competition in the ISP space.
I suppose there are a couple of downsides compared to being able to use your own ONT, in that residential customers can't get SPF ONTs, and Chorus's XGS-PON ONT is quite large and not wall-mountable, which has caused a few people to hold out on XGS-PON offerings (they're working to offer a smaller one, but it got set back a bit, and they also won't start offering it until they run out of the old XGS-PON ONTs). But that's all quite minor (a residential customer wanting an SPF ONT is very niche indeed, as is a genuine need for a residential XGS-PON connection).
I want a dumb gpon sfp not because they won't give me a bridge, but because their bridge makes too much noise.
With DOCSIS there is much more pressure to upgrade all CPE as any given chunk of RF spectrum can only run one version of DOCSIS. One 6MHz channel of RF spectrum on coax has a puny amount of bandwidth compared to a single lambda on fibre.
The major difference is that the ISPs in this particular case do not need to offer any support apart from listing standardized protocols which are supported. If someone brings in their own device, it is on them to set it up and make sure it works with the currently supported protocols.
Also, this business model is nothing new. For example, mobile network operators have been using it for decades. Their base calling services might remain working even on the oldest phones. But when it comes to data services, they are gradually upgrading. Many of them are switching off their 3G networks to free up frequencies, for instance. Millions of people are affected. And yet, there is no drama around it.
One of the reasons might be that these phase-outs are announced and planned very long time in advance so the customers have the time to prepare. And they have a choice. Either upgrade their phones or live without fast-ish data or switch carriers if possible. Which is fair, in my opinion.
It seems to me that the ISPs could use a similar approach and be just fine.
My ISP (note: also owned by my employer) doesn't have this, so the modem I've got is theirs, but I can disable wi-fi. I do, too, so the only client on this thing is my firewall. I assume that everything past my firewall could potentially be hostile.