Re: [PLUG] Cord Cutting Options

I've managed to cut down my monthly cost with Comcast by doing a few things. It had ballooned to $160 a month with HBO + Showtime. I did some research, and found a few things:

- Killed Showtime. It had ballooned to $15 a month instead of $10.

- Switched to a lower Internet max speed. Comcast used to have one Internet speed, then broke it out to several tiers, and of course, put all existing customers into the second most expensive tier. I cut way back. Do you really need more than 3 mbps at home? I sure don't - while I play MMORPGs, all assets are preloaded to the hard disk, and latency is really what matters. The 3 mbps option is only $30 / month.

With these two changes, my bill came down to $110 from $160. I'm eliminated another $8 / month by purchasing my own cable modem, which I confirmed, you can now use due to a class action lawsuit last year. You just have to call in the serial number of the cable modem.

$102 a month is still absurdly high for what it is, but unfortunately, seems to be the best option out there. That gets me HiDef + Digital Tier Plus + HBO + 3 mbps Internet.

Regards,

-Tim

On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 11:03 AM, Eric at Lucii.org <eric@lucii.org> wrote:

I'm thinking of the same thing and would be interesting in
hearing about other options.

The FiOS bill is "ouch" - even without the premium channels.
I'd like to go to a simple business Internet account and then
purchase a Roku box or something similar. I already have a
VOIP account with Flowroute but I'll probably get a static IP
to route the calls reliably (ouch, more $.)

One concern is that Netflix streaming through Verizon is simply
not usable apparently due to their ongoing fight with Cogent
(or other, more sinister reasons.) I've heard that using a VPN
service gets around that so that adds $5 or $10 a month.
Another ouch :-( What is a good VPN service? I know of cotse.net
but would like to hear of other's experiences.

I may even consider switching to Comcast if the service/price
comparisons are favorable. Although, I've only had one outage
on FiOS (their cheap-ass router died) in 5 years which is a
vast improvement from Comcast before that.

Eric

On 02/28/2014 10:09 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> What are the best options for phone/video content/etc for those interested in cord cutting these days?
>
> I know somebody with FIOS who is paying a rather high amount and they are considering dropping to data-only, and then possibly adding a VOIP or cellular option for phone (or just sticking with their cell phones). They don't make a lot of calls, and for TV they mainly watch a few shows on the major networks, history, discovery, etc.
>
> One question that came up is whether there is a cellular ATA out there. They only rarely use one of their cell phones so they might consider just plugging the SIM into such an ATA if it exists, and then unplugging it if they need to use the cell phone. A bluetooth ATA might be another option, where the cell phone provides the phone connection, and any phone in the house can be used to access it (which is the opposite of how the "bluetooth ata" devices I get in a Google search work).
>
> What are the best options these days?
>
> Rich ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
>

--
# Eric Lucas
#
# "Oh, I have slipped the surly bond of earth
# And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...
# -- John Gillespie Magee Jr
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