What is an ONT?

 If you've spotted a small white box fixed to a wall in your home, that's your ONT(Optical Network Terminal). It's Openreach equipment, it belongs to the network rather than to you or to Rebel, and in almost every case it should stay exactly where it is.

What it actually does

Full Fibre broadband arrives as pulses of light down a fibre-optic cable, all the way to your home. Your router can't read light directly — so the ONT sits in between and does the translating. Fibre goes in one side; a signal your router understands comes out the other.

Once it's translated, your router takes over: it plugs into the ONT and creates the Wi-Fi that everything in your home connects to. The ONT does its job quietly in the background. You never need to touch it, configure it, or think about it.

ONT or router — what's the difference?

It's an easy mix-up, so here's the short version. The ONT is fixed to your wall and brings the fibre connection into your home. The router is the box Rebel sends you — it plugs into the ONT and spreads that connection around your home as Wi-Fi.

Think of the ONT as the front door for your broadband, and the router as the thing that carries it into every room. You need both, and they're not interchangeable.

Switching or moving home

Switching to Rebel from another provider? There's nothing to unplug or return. Because every provider uses the same Openreach network, your new service simply runs through the same ONT — often with no engineer visit at all.

Moving out? Leave the ONT, its power supply and the cabling behind. They're part of the property, and whoever moves in next will need them. Moving in somewhere with an ONT already fitted? Good news — we can usually get you live on the existing kit.