I think the smaller cable companies have been charging a rental fee for a while now. There was a cable modem in my apartment when I moved in. The cable company

I think the smaller cable companies have been charging a rental fee for a while now. There was a cable modem in my apartment when I moved in. The cable company set it up no questions asked. 2 weeks later they call me saying that it belonged to them and that I either had to agree to rent their modem or have my service turned off in 24 hours. I ended up replacing it with my own modem. There was no trouble getting the one I bought from amazon setup, just called to register the mac. Interestingly enough that old modem is still sitting in my closet and they have not shown much interest in coming to pick it up.