I have a FRITZ!Box 7530 which is the "gateway" to the internet using VDSL2. My ISP will replace it with a 7630, so I have the old 7530 without AX as a playground.
Everything, except any of its phone features (the analogue rj11 port and the DECT features will remain unsupported, 'forever' - the VDSL2 super-vectoring modem will work, as will all of the other 'usual' wifi router features).
I need a Fritzbox for the DSL connection and I have disabled with the Fritzbox as much as is possible, especially DHCP, but I need phone. There is an ethernet connection from the Fritzbox to an ASUS TUF-AX6000 using openwrt.
So the question is what is the advantage of the Fritzbox for VDSL2?
I have now 2 choices, using the 7630 from the ISP for the DSL-connection or flash the 7530 (where I am the owner now) with openwrt.
I need the phonenumber once a year for registering with spammers. Last time I needed a phone number to buy a train ticket for Italy online. For booking you need a phone no too and I don't give them a mobile no.
There's the answer.
If you want to have a quite cheap device which runs OpenWrt and can establish a VDSL2 connection, there're not many alternatives on the market.
Get a SIP account and use your smartphone via wifi?
Where can I get SIP with a phone no for free? I have a free phone no included from my ISP. Earlier I had SIP numbers, but the services are all shut down.
Yes and no... yes it is inconvenient, but no a SIP base adds considerable complexity maybe best not put into a router.
I am pretty sure any VDSL2 modem will work, so I doubt there is a hard requirement on it being a Fritz modem?
I use a FB7520 (the AVM special branded FB7530 with some software restrictions on the ethernet ports, at least under FritzOS) running OpenWrt as bridged modem (under openWrt the ethernet port restrictions di not exist as far as I can tell). The advantages are for me:
A) I trust OpenWrt more than FritzOS and I do want to use my OpenWrt-derived router as PPPoE-Terminator, something FritzOS will not really allow (they dropped a bridged modem option some years ago and IMHO decided they want to exclusively play higher up in the food-chain than lowly modem). OpenWrt allowed me to effortlessly configure my bridged modem as I like it, including having access from my router to the modem's luci GUI.
B) OpenWrt plays nicer with go-dsl especially for longer term monitoring... FritzOS, when called with the -o LoadSupportData=1 argument will (last time I looked) gobble up more and more memory over time an cause its own out-of-memory crisis eventually
C) Since 2nd hand FB7520s are quite cheap now, I got myself two of these and use these to perform "safe" updates with fall-back. That is, if I currently use device1 with say OpenWrt 25.12.5, and 25.12.6 comes out, I flash that on the currently inactive device2 an exchange devices, so should the update have say stability issues I can quickly change back to the known working device.
Mind you telephony-wise, I am using an old gigaset C610IP style SIP/VoIP basestation anyway*, exactly so I could pick my modems and routers independently from VoIP concerns. I undersatand thatz often one can also use a Fritzbox to do the same duty (just configure it to use DHCP over one of the ethernet-ports as WAN and then only configure the telephony and do not connect other computers to its LAN or WLAN except for changing configurations).
Well, you could: use the 7530 as bridged modem, use the asus as primary router and the 7630 as pure SIP/VoIP base station (foregoing the 7360's wifi7).
*) Would not recommend that device currently the last firmware update happened years ago, it only seems to support IPv4 (which is fine for me, O2 does not offer working SIP/VoIP via IPv6 anyway). I probably would try the repurpose a reasonably cheap but still supported fritzbox to do VoIP-only duty. But both gigaset and AVM/Fritz! have "recently" changed owners so it is unclear how long both options are going to be available, but there are other commercial SIP/VoIP base stations around to choose from.
E.g. here: https://www.dus.net/de/tarife#starter however you will have to pay for the actual calls.
(Mind you they still charge 10 euros for a new number and the 5/year for that number or 1.5 Euro/years if you let them port an existing number from a different carrier).
See, that is not "free" from your ISP either, they just fold the cost into their tarif and do not show you explicitly what part of that pays for the telephony services...
As already said, I need a phone no for spammers. I have a free one from my ISP. The cable of the phone is unplugged and only plugged in, when i need it.
AFAIR my old DECT-phone supports SIP, but I didn't use this for 10 years. Don't know where it is lying around.
So the big 4 mobile carriers will have internal cheap access to telephony and can hence use this cheaply to add "bonusses" to their internet offers without much internal cost, all other ISPs (unless daughters of these carriers, like fraenk and congstar for telekom, or drillisch for 1&1) have to buy telephony services from essentially the big 4 directly or indirectly, costing them more. Good on your ISP to make this more clear by offering telephony as an option, allowing those interested opting out of telephony, no?
Ah, sorry, a mis-deduction from my side, given how popular Fritzboxen are with german ISPs.
I can not say, I am not using their services, I guess googling should help to figure this out, but since they take either 5 or 1.5 Euro per year for keeping the number registered I guess they would at least inform you before something like that?
What country are we talking about here? Inside the EU, the EU regulation 2015/2120 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2015/2120/oj/eng) should give you enough standing to contact your national regulation authority to lean onto your ISP to unblock the required ports... out side the EU I have no clue, but I would also address this with the regulator. Nut first I would try if this is still the case...
BTW, I am not trying to steer you into using the FB7530 as bridged modem, if you are happy with the 7630, by all means use it (e.g. in PPPoE passthrough mode with no credentials put into the 7630, assuming your ISP uses PPPoE in the first place).
I never used the 7630 till now, i use the 7530 at the moment and have to decide what to do. With the 7630 I have to plugin everything, disable DHCP and I am done.
Any F!B can be used behind an OpenWrt router to deal with all the phone features (only). Configured for IPoE mode (and regular SIP pings), modem, wlan, routing features unused, locked into a dedicated VLAN (or not). I've been doing that for the last decade, a cheap/ lower-end but security supported F!B to cover 1-2 internal analogue FXS ports (fax), up to 6 DECT cat-iq 2.x handsets, up to 10 internal SIP accounts/ phones, serving up to 10 external SIP MSNs. If AVM can do one thing well, it's phone stuff (if you remain within their limits). It works, reliably.
So 7530 with OpenWrt acting as modem+router-AP and 7630 with Fritz!OS for all the phone stuff (only) would be a viable choice.