We get Time Warner Cable Internet Lite. I noticed about a year and a
half ago that they started charging $4 a month "rent" on the cable modem
that previouisly had been provided for free. A few months ago, this fee
went up to $6 a month.
I don't like to rent anything. I found out I could get a used Cisco
2100 cable modem (exactly what they provided) for about $15 shipped. I
called Time Warner, spent 15 minutes to give them the new Mac address
from it. Spent 45 minutes driving to & fro the customer service center
returning the old modem. The Cisco 2100 can handle up to 48 megabit per
second downloads, so it is just fine for me.
I am out 1 hour of my time and $15 up front to save $72 a year for as
long as I keep the Internet service. It's something I had been putting
off, but finally got around to this week. $6 doesn't seem like much,
but when you add it to the everyday price of $15 a month for the
Internet Lite, the % markup was huge. I feel like I got rid of a 40%
markup!