So why the need for an account? Is it not "phoning home"?
I don't know specifically, but clearly any web interface control panel only exposes the controls that the blob decide. My Netgear, for example, happens not to be one which can be flashed with the open source firmware, and offers no control of the target noise margin so I am a hostage to low speeds because the default target noise margin is too great. I'm not saying the improvement would necessarily be dramatic, but at least if I had control I could tweak it and see what happens.