TLDR: My ISP knows my wifi password and I can't change it without sending it to them in plaintext. I can't control whether the wifi is turned on or off. They completely control a wifi network within my house. I can't replace their router except for running my own slave network.

The ISP is Truespeed, local to the Bristol/Bath area I think. They have their own fibre network.

EDIT: I've gone ahead and cancelled the service!

Edit2: I'm currently dealing with someone in customer services who thinks my cooling off period ended when my installation happened. This despite the T&Cs explicitly saying I can cancel after installation during the cooling off period.

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I recently signed up to a FTTP provider and they installed it yesterday. Alarm bells started ringing when I discovered that their supplied router is completely locked down. I can't control anything except physically turn it off. The web interface is not accessible.

Right now, we don’t allow customers to change their router settings themselves. This is to make sure we can keep both your home network and our Truespeed network fully secure. But we’re working on making router configuration more open in the future so you can access your Truespeed router.

I emailed them explaining that I need to do things like port forwarding, static IP assignment, etc etc. They said that all of those changes must be done by them remotely. But one option is to get my own router and they'll setup a dmz so that I can do all my own network management.

Fine. I ordered my own router. But then I remembered something - the engineer who installed their router wrote my wifi password down on the cardboard box and his phone was connected to it. Then I noticed that my wifi password was emailed to me in a pdf. They clearly know my wifi password. So I emailed them asking how I can change my wifi password. This was their response:

At present any changes need to come via us, and we then push the changes to the router. We do have a portal in development which will mean you can do it without contacting us, but this is a way off at this time.

If you want to let me know what you want the password to be (and we can change the SSID as well) I can get it done ASAP?

So they want me to send them my new password in plaintext in an email.

Currently they run and control a wifi network within my property. If you can't see why this is an issue maybe consider this story. There are a whole host of security issues with this setup. Anyone who works for my ISP could come and use my wifi network for whatever they want.

My current plan is to get them to turn off their wifi completely when my router arrives. But consider this. I don't have control over whether that router's wifi is on or off. It could be turned back on at any time. Maybe I can physically sabotage their router - destroying the aerials perhaps.

Can I replace their router entirely? I don't think so. I know this is possible with BT because they allow it and supply the PPPoE details. Judging by their correspondence with me, Truespeed would not allow this.