ISP issued home routers have a remote update procedure, enabled by default. At least that's how it works out in France.
Starting from there (to be checked), shortage of equipment is not a thing: most routers are programmable computers, all we need to do is update the software to something that doesn't suck. And best of all, the customer doesn't even have to know. They just wake up one morning, and as if by magic, their Zoom/Meets/Hangouts calls suddenly work better.
Now if most home routers are not updated by the ISP… my condolences to your country I guess.
Edit: OK, real question: how does home routing actually work in the US? Who is responsible for what equipment, and for the ISP issued equipment, are there any relevant remote update capabilities, and if so are ISPs actually competent at doing updates?
Here in the US the CPE provided by ISPs is almost universally barely functional and low quality. For fiber connections the actual interconnect hardware might be better quality. The box I have has some nice Alcatel-Lucent hardware.
The software running on these things is usually garbage.
Typically people will get routers from their ISP, and their ISP often charges a monthly fee. The ISP is then responsible for troubleshooting and updates. Except for network management related updates, my experience has been that they don’t often (or sometimes ever) issue updates. ISPs here expect most people will never directly interface with the router’s management functionality so it’s often very basic and clunky.
In my home we put any CPE we get into pass through mode and connect our own rack of professional network gear.
Starting from there (to be checked), shortage of equipment is not a thing: most routers are programmable computers, all we need to do is update the software to something that doesn't suck. And best of all, the customer doesn't even have to know. They just wake up one morning, and as if by magic, their Zoom/Meets/Hangouts calls suddenly work better.
Now if most home routers are not updated by the ISP… my condolences to your country I guess.
Edit: OK, real question: how does home routing actually work in the US? Who is responsible for what equipment, and for the ISP issued equipment, are there any relevant remote update capabilities, and if so are ISPs actually competent at doing updates?