How to identify ACT Fibernet carrier locked router

[INTL_akash]

I was looking to buy a used router and came across multiple listing on olx of routers which i was considering.

Then i came to know that ACT Fibernet used to provide good router models from top brands such as TENDA AC10, TP-LINK C5, TP-LINK C1200 etc, but they locked such routers.

My concern is that these seller might be selling such routers and they might not be much useful for my local connection. If anyone here had ACT Fibernet and purchased such routers from them at the time of the connection, or have used such locked router from ACT, can you please tell me how to identify a ACT locked router from an unlocked one? What to look for in the router login page?

In Jio and Airtel it is a no brainer even the login page has their brand logo.

 

[nando]

Yeah they are having custom firmware which has some features disabled(like remote management, cannot modify dns, cannot use same wifi name for both 2g &5g) also WAN port says unplugged if you use connet to another isp cable, I guess it is not possible to modify the firmware
You can possibly identify by looking at the bottom of the router for sticker containing act password or by looking at the router management page

 

[goDofWar_skr]

I use an ACT Fibernet bundled router. The tplink ax1500 model.
It is not locked at all and I can modify every setting when logged in to the router portal.

However, one caveat is that the bundled router exact model number may not be the same as the publically sold model.
Manufacturers make specific models for ISP-bundled routers which do not receive the same support as their publically sold counterparts.
Hence the warranty will be less on these routers and may not be honoured by the manufacturer but rather the ISP will handle any RMA requests in the warranty period.
Also, another issue I see is that these routers may not be supported with any of the custom ROMs. At least as far as I have searched, I could not find any DDWRT or OpenWRT firmware for my model.

Other than these nitpicks I don't think the router is in any way unusable with any other local networks.

You see many such routers on olx because ACT is giving a pretty good deal. If you pay 6 months in advance for some plans, then they provide the router free of cost.
So a person can just avail that and then 6 months later he can reapply for another 6 months and get another router for free while continuing to use the previous router. Thus be able to sell the new router to recoup some money.

 

[wM%GyY3GdRiFA@]

@goDofWar_skr the ax1500 comes with act is locked. not not locked carrier wise but many settings are hidden and disabled on this router. also you can't have one mesh, cant access it from tplink cloud, can't access vlan settings and so on.

 

[variablevector]

You could try to flash them with the stock firmware. They may have a superuser login which lets you flash anything you want on to it. But a more reliable option is to open it up and use the JTAG header.