For the most part, I believe it is all about the management and troubleshooting ability from the ISP side. You can buy ONT devices, but I think that the OLT device of the ISP must support the one you bought, which really defeats the purpose of buying it. There are even SFP modules that can work as an ONT interface.
Really your best bet is to ask your ISP if they can bridge a port on the ONT so you can use your own router after that without double NAT. In this scenario the ONT will be functioning mainly as a media converter.
My ISP was not willing to do this for me, but they did give me the admin password for the device so I could change the SSID on the integrated WiFi. From there I was able to configure a bridge interface. Everyone is happy with this outcome.
Most of the time in my experience you can’t BYO ONT because it needs to be authed to the network and the ISP won’t do that other than for their own hardware. On the other hand I’ve never heard of being charged rental fees for an ONT.
> Really your best bet is to ask your ISP if they can bridge a port on the ONT so you can use your own router after that without double NAT. In this scenario the ONT will be functioning mainly as a media converter.
An ONT is already a bridge - those are for the cases when you have integrated ONT in a router provided by your ISP.
If you are provisioned with ONT, you can connect your own router to it
