Our area is getting Fibre shortly, and I'm therefore looking at the implications of upgrading our Slingshot broadband connection to fibre.

I have noticed that both the most-commonly pictured Chorus ONT (2xPOTS, 4xEthernet, 8-pin power) and the Slingshot-offered router (Tripleplay150) have phone outlets. I emailed Slingshot to ask if you had to use the TP150 outlet. They stated that they "encourage" use of the TP150 "FSX1" outlet, but gave no indication of the basis or strength of that recommendation, and have not (as yet) replied to my request for clarification.

So my questions are:

1) Is there any fundamental difference between these two phone outlets?

2) Has anybody used the ONT phone outlet with Slingshot fibre?

3) Has anybody tried setting up a Slingshot fibre connection with a router other than the Slingshot-provided TP150? (I would assume setting up a fibre connection on a router is little different than setting up an ADSL connection on a modem-router.)

The reason I'm looking to avoid having the phone connection through the TP150 are twofold: (i) it avoids one more potential Point Of Failure between the fibre connection and the phone & (ii) I'm seriously underwhelmed by the TP150 (no-name-brand, only 802.11n & no gigabit ethernet) and would prefer to use a router of my own choice.