[Fnoord]

Same in other Western countries like The Netherlands and Germany. The cable network is from the time cable TV was rolled out (70s/80s). The phone network is older, and also more unreliable. VDSL and DOCSIS are mostly FttC though.

I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point (in Dutch called ISRA for phone, AOP for cable, and FTU (English acronym) for fiber). This is usually in the same vicinity where gas/water/electricity enters house. From there you can wire your house with ethernet. Maybe add in a WLAN repeater here and there, proper cable management, and you're done.

[vladvasiliu]

> I believe EU demands people to be allowed to freely pick their own router. Whatever brand it is and whoever owns it you can put it near your demarcation point

Do you have a reference for that? I have FTTH in France from SFR and I suspect there's some funny business going on where you have to jump through hoops in order to replace the provided router. Not only won't they provide a DHCP lease if you don't ask with the right options, but lately the dhcp server seems to actually stop providing anything at all once it saw an un recognized request. Support has to intervene to make it work again and the issue doesn't seem common because it usually takes them a week to find out what's up. They would even try replacing the router at your house...

Edit: found the EU regulation : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Indeed, it states that the providers should not impose restrictions on the use of terminal equipments, and that users should be free to chose them. (§5 on the second page).

[Fnoord]

Thanks for the link.

It is a directive which EU members must implement. The Netherlands is going to implement it in 2021. [1] I am unsure about the deadline for implementation.

You can try something like putting your router in bridge mode. For example Ziggo here allows that. KPN already allows free choice of "modem" (read: router). And a Fritz!box can be used as bridge if you use PPPoE client elsewhere. There's even PCI(e) DSL modems. A recent example [2].

[1] https://www.acm.nl/nl/publicaties/acm-consumenten-mogen-eige...

[2] https://www.draytek.co.uk/products/business/vigornic-132

[vladvasiliu]

I've dug a bit more into this, and apparently the law is not yet in effect in France either, but still being discussed. The curious can track the progress at [0].

Regarding bridge mode, I'm only aware of one ISP in France whose box allows doing that (Free). In my case there's no such option, it can only work as a router.

[0] https://www.senat.fr/dossier-legislatif/ppl19-048.html