US Law Stops ISPs Charging Customers for Their Own Routers

Some consumers are savvy enough to go out and select the best router for their needs, but that doesn’t stop ISPs demanding a router rental fee every month. However, a new US law means such practices are soon to be prohibited.

As Ars Technica reports(Opens in a new window), a US government spending bill(Opens in a new window) has been approved by Congress and signed by President Trump. It contains a new “consumer right to accurate equipment charges” and should come into law by the middle of this year. The new law stops ISPs from charging for equipment the consumer supplies, which means the router rental fee should disappear for those consumers.

It sounds like a ridiculous fee to impose, but anyone who’s a customer of Frontier Communications has probably seen it in action. Even if you provide your own router to connect to Frontier’s service, there’s still a $10 per month “Wi-Fi Router” fee imposed. Frontier charges the fee regardless of whether you choose to use their router or not, and in some cases the company doesn’t even ship out the router, but still applies the charge.

While the new law is a win for consumers in the US, it seems unlikely ISPs will happily accept a reduction in the fees they automatically collect each month. The router rental fee may disappear in name only and we’ll have to wait and see how it gets rebadged. Hopefully it doesn’t, but it would be foolish to assume no alternative is added to your bill which manages to not break the new rules.

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