Good info all of you.
I started thinking about this when I saw a Reddit post by an ISP customer who went to the Calix website and said it was “creepy as hell”. But the post was 6 years ago, and you have to take stuff people post on the Internet with a grain of salt. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/gd46zy/my_isp_will_require_the_calix_gigacenter_in_my/ I do remember talking to Calix at a WISPAmerica show, I think the last one I went to was St. Louis in 2015 so it must have been at least 10 years ago. The guy was very helpful and I think even lived near me, but after following up decided my company wasn’t nearly big enough to use them. Had to create an account, send people to training, buy direct not through distribution, just to kick the tires and do a lab eval of the WiFi performance. My impression was they were for ISPs that would buy equipment by the truckload, and also they were kind of a no sex before marriage company, not even a kiss. Take the plunge and commit. But that was 10 years ago. Another thing someone else has mentioned to me is ISP customers look at their router and assume their ISP is named something like GigaSpire BLAST, and that’s who to call for support. Reminds me of the old days when lots of people said their Internet provider was named Linksys. I’m sure many of us had prospective customers say Internet is free, they use that free provider Linksys, and question why we wanted to charge them. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Chuck Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2025 8:17 AM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Calix question I have built 3 different companies using Calix and have had no problems like you describe below. Xgs in an E7 shelf is pretty high density. And you dont have to pay monthly if you dont want their managed router solution. Never had a problem getting equipment. Sent from my iPhone On Dec 14, 2025, at 5:55 AM, Mark Radabaugh <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Calix lost me when I needed higher density hardware and all they ever wanted to talk about was how they were a cloud service company and look at all our shiny toys you can pay us monthly for. Yeah - what about actually hooking up customers? Oh, if you give us a two year forecast of what you want to buy we will hook you up - just don’t count on them actually having the equipment when you need it. Mark On Dec 13, 2025, at 7:27 PM, Mark - Myakka Technologies via AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Ken, We use them. First of all their HW just works and works well. They may seem to be expensive on the MRC, but they bring a bunch of other services to the table. They will help with marketing, network engineering, etc. The support is VERY responsive and the amount of data collected in the service cloud is unbelievable. This is all they do, managed routers and fiber distribution. They have to be top notch to survive. They fit into our business model, but each business if different. I would say give them a chance to give you a proposal. See what they bring to the table. Maybe it is a fit, maybe not. -- Best regards, Mark mailto:[email protected] Myakka Communications www.Myakka.com <https://www.myakka.com/> ------ Saturday, December 13, 2025, 1:51:56 PM, you wrote: I assume some of the folks on this list who are doing fiber use Calix ONTs and routers? If I go to the Calix website, maybe as a provider thinking of using them as a vendor, I am totally confused. It is not clear what products they sell or how I would use them. It all seems to be glossy marketing stuff about their agentic AI cloud and market insights. I don’t see a single picture of a piece of hardware. Is this how a lot of ISPs are making money despite charging low prices? Do they have an “agentic workforce” monitoring how their customers use the Internet, cross referencing it to demographics, and mining that data for ads, upselling, etc.? It seems they have special cloud features for MDU managers as well. It seems a lot of cable companies use Amazon’s eero, I wonder if service provider eero is like Calix, or if it’s just the retail eero with a few remote management features added. -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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