In North America you get either a TV Cable (coaxial) outlet, which then needs a cable modem (DOCSIS).

Or you get a phone outlet, for which you need a DSL modem.

For both cases, back in the day, you still needed a router. Nowadays it’s usually a modem-router combo, and usually they are terrible.

Everyone always has a rats nest of wires somewhere behind a TV or couch. :D

This is the case even in eastern europe. Especially in older cities there was big rush to connect people with TV Cable in 90s and that gets reused for internet.

I suspect connections built in recent years are ethernet and if you want TV they do in through that other way atound.

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.

> 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).

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

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

In Toronto most new condos come with Ethernet ports in walls. Fiber to apartment is not exotic either. The board of the condo I lived in managed to get from Bell a CAD 25/mo (USD 19/mo) offer for 100Mbs internet for all tenants. Usually it's CAD 80/mo (USD 60/mo).

New build apartments definitely have both coax or ethernet. Most housing stock just isn't that new in the US.

In every modern apartment building I've lived in, there is only an ethernet port in the wall.

I live in an apartment block built in 2008 (Czechia) and we have ADSL/VDSL only.

Given that my work has 1Gb connection, I just download the really big things at work.