zlacker

Yep, but if you do that you need to staff a help line with people who can say "turn the box over and look at the sticker, no the sticker with the numbers on it, it's white with black letters and says PASSWORD in a big font, no the password isn't literally PASSWORD, it's the line below that with the strange letters, yes, to type that one you need to hold the shift key and press 3..."

Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.

>>jandre+(OP)
Yes, which costs money, which is exactly my original point. It's not because "Oh I'm so hassled because customers are dumb", it's "No, hiring people to do support would cost us money, which we don't want".

> Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.

I can't recall a single time a technician wasn't required to come to my flat/house to install a new router. I'm based in Spain, maybe it's different elsewhere, but I think it's pretty much a requirement, you can't setup the WAN endpoint or ISP router yourself.

>>embedd+U
Last time I moved I opted for the "self install" kit, which was fine because I'm technical and the previous owners already had the service so there was nothing that needed to be done except hooking up the pre-configured modem. Saved me $200 in truck roll fees.

>>jandre+C2
Interesting stuff, I've asked if I could do the installation myself every single time I've moved to a new place, and never has the ISP (three different ones) said yes. There isn't any installation fee place(probably by law?) so that isn't an issue here, just a hassle to coordinate having to meet between 12:00 and 18:00 or some super wide range of time for them to come and install it.

>>embedd+a9
In the US for the past 5+ years Xfinity/Comcast, Charter, and whatever CenturyLink is called these days have all heavily pushed the "self-install kit" option vs traditional tech install each time I've moved.

Worked 4/5 times (all with cable), only time it failed was because I had apparently subscribed to a DSL plan from CenturyLink without realizing and they needed to wire up the extra lines upstream for the "modern" version of DSL to work in my apartment. After insisting multiple times that the self-install kit was 100% plug-n-play at my new address despite my intense skepticism since I really needed reliable internet from Day 1 during COVID remote work.

I was seriously missing Comcast/cable by the time that 1 yr contract was up, the devil you know and all...