No big peer review needed - all it takes is a couple of people in GB taking a look at what in blazes their routers are doing.

But to those of us who have heard/known of TR069, we knew that stuff like this would eventually surface...

Small point. The devices called out by the authors are not routers, they are MODEMS which are only installed on Fibre To The Cabinet installations. (These modems are then connected, usually, to an ISP-supplied router such as the BT Home Hub or whatever equivalent your ISP chooses to use.)

Fibre installs are by no means the majority or even the standard in the UK. But obviously the general "don't trust your ISP router if you really think the security services are after you" advice would seem to hold good no matter how you're connected.

The basic points (TR069, remote-accessible backdoors for "configuration changes" by the provider - greetings and my personal choice swear words to Telefonica/O2 Germany here!) are still valid for DSL connections.

The router is the perfect gateway into your private home network, especially as Windows disables the firewall in a "home network"...