Homer's Travels: Cutting The Cord

Sunday, November 04, 2018

Cutting The Cord

This was year we started experimenting with cutting the cable provider cord.  At the beginning of the year our cable company provided TV, telephone, and internet services.  In addition to this we had a no-contract dumb cell phone, Amazon Prime, and Netflix.  At the peak we were paying $285 a month for communication, information, and entertainment.

We started cutting in March when we replaced our landline and our dumb cell phone with smart phones (t-mobile unlimited everything).  Doing this actually increased our monthly costs by $30 (some because the cost of the phones is included in the cell bill).  In my opinion the extra services provided by the smart phones - instant access to the internet wherever you are, access to travel apps when on the road, being reachable when you want to be - is worth some of the increase.

The next step was at the end of July.  We subscribed to Hulu with Live TV.  We decided to try this service out for a month or two to see if it could replace the cable TV.  Hulu has a mediocre library of TV and movies but it did cover things that were not included in Netflix and Amazon Prime, services we already had.  What Hulu has that the other services didn't was around fifty channels of live TV.  It has most of the channels the Wife and I watch the most and it had more sports channels than we had with our cable provider.  Most of the shows I can't watch on Hulu are available not-live on Netflix  (or even Hulu).  Our main concern was video quality.  We'd tested Hulu once before but it was a bit jittery and buffered often.  This time the experience was completely different.  Buffering was infrequent and the experience was much improved from January.

The final test was in September when college Football started.  After a month of watching without any major issues, including not reaching the terabyte data limit of our cable provider, we cancelled the cable TV. Our cable provider is now only our internet service provider.

When we cancelled our cable TV the cost of the internet went up by about $9 but this was balanced by a dramatic drop overall.  The final number, which includes cable internet, cell phone service, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu with Live TV, is $220 a month.  This is a savings of $65 a month or $780 of savings a year.  Not too bad.

I am happy with our setup (The Wife appears to be happy too).  My viewing habits are changing as I am binging more than watching stuff live.  I'm especially reliving my childhood by catching up on old cult classics I didn't have a chance to watch when I was a kid.

Now excuse me, I have a few more seasons of Monty Python to catch up on.

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