Eh, I&#x27;m skeptical that a chat customer-service flunky really has deep insight into high level regulatory-compliance decisions -- especially surrounding regulations that have only been floated as a proposal and which don&#x27;t, yet, even exist (edit: the guidance seems to have moved forward, but only after amendments making it clear that the FCC <i>specifically</i> wasn&#x27;t banning open source firmware)<p>TPLink has always been a shit company when it came to firmware, and routers with locked firmware predate by decades this FCC proposal. I&#x27;m not convinced there&#x27;s a cause-and-effect relationship here.<p>Edit: Anyway, from the horse&#x27;s mouth back in Nov 2015 after the comment period closed on the proposal:<p>&quot;One immediate outcome of this ongoing dialogue is a step we’ve taken to clarify our guidance on rules the Commission adopted last year in the U-NII proceeding. Our original lab guidance document released pursuant to that Order asked manufacturers to explain “how [its] device is protected from ‘flashing’ and the installation of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT”. This particular question prompted a fair bit of confusion – were we mandating wholesale blocking of Open Source firmware modifications?<p>We were not, but we agree that the guidance we provide to manufacturers must be crystal-clear to avoid confusion. So, today we released a revision to that guidance to clarify that our instructions were narrowly-focused on modifications that would take a device out of compliance. The revised guidance now more accurately reflects our intent in both the U-NII rules as well as our current rulemaking, and we hope it serves as a guidepost for the rules as we move from proposal to adoption.&quot;<p>If TPLink really is locking out firmware &quot;because of the FCC&quot;, they&#x27;ve simply misinterpreted things.