Surely that is not true? I thought rental fees were common with using the vendor equipment (something like $10/month). It is a frequently listed as a cost cutting measure to buy your own modem rather than rent from The ISP. A modem is $100-200, so you should be net positive after a year on the investment.

No longer true last time I went in to renegotiate my service plan, I got a better monthly rate and higher bandwidth using their gear. I had previously used my own modem and router.

Huh. At least there is now a carrot to get you to mule for their public WiFi offering.

docsis modem costs $30, wireless AP costs another $50, add repeaters if you want.

I have been using my setup for 9 years and never paid a dime in rent of equipment.

the setup is plug-n-play / one youtube video away

I guess you don’t want the fastest speed or no data cap. We easily surpass the 1TB cap with 4K streaming and WFH video calls.

I use Cox and get their fastest speed (2.5Gbps) with the option for unlimited data if I wanted it, and I'm using my own equipment.

Similarly, never seen limitations on speed or allotment if using owned equipment. The ISP will give a big scary message about how support will be unable to help you if things go wrong, but that’s the extent of it.