Hi, im a service tech from Telekom, i can confirm that there are some regions (esp the norther Germany) are experiencing peering issues. Here in the south it is not that bad.
Tl;dr: O² is a solid pick, personally im not a huge fan of them but they have a subjective good routing and public peering.
If you are unhappy with your Speedport Smart 4 (i guess it is that one for 6,95€) you can return it through the 14day return policy.
Personally, i think the Smart 4 is one of our good products, if you dont want to tinker THAT much with it since its WLAN performance is usable and the WiFi Mesh is tightly integrated. While you can enter custom PPPoE credentials some services may not work like VoIP. If your ISP of choice doesnt support Dualstack... prepare for trouble
Fritz! routers on the other hand are THE most flexible consumer(friendly) brand in Germany to this date. Esp when it comes to DS-Lite support.
If we wont supply you with fiber it is very likely that you only have Vodafone or O² as a option, sometimes there is a local ISP (the local Stadtwerke), in my case Netcom BW, who will run the fibre network.
1&1, Vodafone, O² aand many others CAN (often called open access) use our Telekom Fibre network either via Bitstream (aka LS2BSA) or as a Wholesale (means we do most of the routing). The later one will not change your latency/routing for most cases.
Another factor is DS-Lite, most ISPs use it, sometimes CGNAT, this does add latency to some degree, altho i wouldnt worry to much about it. Services which NEED a public IPv4 will suffer if the peering is suboptimal since there is more NAT involved and the peers are overloaded.
EDIT: Fritz! routers i would pick:
\- 7590 AX v2
\- 7530 AX
\- 4060 (req. a external modem)
\- 7690 (IF you need Wifi7 for MLO, the 7690 does NOT have the 6GHz band)
The 7590 (non AX) and 7490 are old by now, esp the 7490 (launch 2013).
If you want built-in VoIP (RJ11 port), port forwarding, and Wi-Fi 6/6E, you’ll probably want to look at something like a DrayTek or certain Fritz!Box models.
They’re a bit more expensive but they’re designed for exactly the kind of setup you’re describing.
A lot of the newer consumer routers (TP-Link / Asus / Netgear) dropped integrated VoIP ports, which is why you didn’t see them at Officeworks.
The typical setup now is either:
• Router + separate ATA adapter for VoIP
• Or a router that specifically supports FXS ports
Some options people run with FTTP that still support VoIP:
• Fritz!Box 7590 AX – Wi-Fi 6, strong VoIP support
• DrayTek Vigor 2765 / 2865 series – very configurable
• Fritz!Box 7690 if you want newer Wi-Fi
You’ll still get 2.4 GHz for legacy devices, plus 5 GHz and newer bands.
Since you're on FTTP, remember you don’t actually need a modem anymore, just plug the router straight into the NBN NTD.
Laverna_Yerai
