Australian government program ends, bricks thousands of functioning test routers
After the conclusion of an Australian government program, thousands of SamKnows routers used by volunteers to test broadband speeds were disabled, raising e-waste concerns.
Last week, thousands of SamKnows routers were bricked after an Australian government program concluded. The program, run by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), began in 2020 to test and report on typical broadband speeds and performance in Australia. Volunteers received routers, known as whiteboxes, supplied by SamKnows. These devices performed tests using SamKnows-maintained test servers hosted in Australia.
The program, officially called Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA), focused on fixed-line broadband services delivered over the NBN and other access networks. Last month, the program ended, and the ACCC released its final performance report. Subsequently, the routers used in the program were disabled after June 30.
Ars Technica reviewed a copy of an email sent to an MBA volunteer in mid-June, informing them that the program would end on June 30, 2026, and that their whitebox would be disabled and their SamKnows One account closed. The email, signed by "The SamKnows Team (part of Cisco)," also stated that after June 30, the devices would stop collecting data and user data would be deleted.
However, as one volunteer pointed out to Ars Technica, the routers are still functional, making the decision to disable them an avoidable e-waste risk. The ACCC did not specify how many routers were disabled, but a December 2020 report indicated an initial expectation of distributing about 4,000 whiteboxes over the program's duration, with over 2,600 distributed by December 2020.
