Just Cut The Cable...Yikes!

[Maddog2020]

My Internet bill just went form $30 to $55. That's an 83% increase.

I called and told them I can't afford that (white lie) so they offered to double my speed to 30M for the same price. I'm not sure how that addressed the "I can't afford" statement I made. So I canceled my internet.

Since I would probably go insane without the Internet, I already had plan 'B' in place. Both my wife and I now connect to the Internet using our phones as a hot spot....for Free (using Foxfi)! So far (2 days) the speed is just as good as our cable internet and has been very reliable. We both have unlimited data on our phones so no worries there.

Any other brave souls out there?

 

[rdss]

I have the "triple play" with Comcast and wanted to remove the phone portion, they told me it would cost exactly the same to have just two services as three so I kind of held off. I'm probably going to get rid of everything but internet when I get back home and possibly just turn in all my equipment and see if it's worth making my iPhone a hot spot. Thanks for the Foxfi idea, I will have to dig into that. Just dug, not a iPhone app......

 

[JaSonic]

we only have internet right now, through Knology. Thinking of going with direct tv for some satellite tv. We've been just watching shows and movies on netflix. lol In no hurry though, just want to get it when football season starts, for NFL sunday ticket. I like their 29.99 a month promotion going on. it's only for 12 months, and you have to have a 24 month contract to get that deal. so i wonder how much the last 12 months will cost.

 

[rdss]

The last 12 will get their money back from you for the first year.

 

[JaSonic]

The last 12 will get their money back from you for the first year.

yeah, before i bring up the 29.99 deal, i'll ask them how much 12 months is, normally. and if it matches up the same as with 29.99 for the first 12 months, then i'll probably take it.

 

[ThatTmoGuy]

I dropped all services a couple months back and just use my phone or what ever wifi I find when I'm out and about. I miss having all the speed I had before but it works fine for me.

 

[ChrisJ]

Last time I was without internet was 1995 when my parents canceled our compuserve account due to me running up several $400+ a month bills.

It lasted around a month and I couldn't take it anymore. Luckily somewhere in there unlimited internet showed up and I was rescued. :banana:

 

[JaSonic]

oh, and i will also ask for free nfl sunday ticket.

 

[slitzell]

I have the most badass internet money can buy lol. Speeds up to 60mbps. I avg about 45.

I have cable with hd dvr and my internet. My bill is about 145

 

[Maddog2020]

I have Dish Network with a Hopper DVR (HD) which is awesome for $54 right now. Internet is now free since I was already paying for a data plan on my phones. It's not 60M but when I tested it is was at about 14M which is not bad.

 

[ChrisJ]

I have Dish Network with a Hopper DVR (HD) which is awesome for $54 right now. Internet is now free since I was already paying for a data plan on my phones. It's not 60M but when I tested it is was at about 14M which is not bad.

Do you have unlimited data via the phones? We weren't able to get that when we tried.

 

[ungawd]

I have the most badass internet money can buy lol. Speeds up to 60mbps. I avg about 45.

I have cable with hd dvr and my internet. My bill is about 145

Mine caps out at 48mbps for the same price. I can up it to the 109mbps minimum plan, which probably caps at 146mbps, for an exhorbitant fee per month though. It's fast enough already.

 

[Maddog2020]

Do you have unlimited data via the phones? We weren't able to get that when we tried.

Yes, we are grandfathered in with Verizon. They don't offer it anymore, so I fear when we update our phones they might take it away. We have another year before that will happen.

 

[slitzell]

Yes, we are grandfathered in with Verizon. They don't offer it anymore, so I fear when we update our phones they might take it away. We have another year before that will happen.

Oh they will take it away, or you have to pay full contract price for your new phone

 

[Maddog2020]

I could always buy a new phone outside of Verizon and then just switch it over. It's easy to do on their web site and may be worth the extra cost to keep unlimited data.

 

[Swordsmith]

I killed DirecTV a few years back when they pissed me off by not managing to repair my system, so I most of the time only got half the stations. Five repair efforts and I gave up and switched to DISH

Recently I dropped DISH because I noticed we practically never watched it, just used Hulu and Netflix. DISH sucked me in with their $29.99 deal but the second year's service cost nearly $90 per month so it was a hefty fee.

I also recently dropped my landline phone carrier, since we'd used them for nothing but the DSL line for the past couple years, and I got a better deal getting internet only from my local cable company.

While waiting for the cable to hook up, I tried T-Mobile's hot spot. Turns out $50 worth of internet lasted my family about a week, plus it was slower and choppier than DSL.

A friend loaned me a Verizon hotspot last spring for several weeks, he had one of those grandfathered unlimited deals. It wasn't as good as DSL, but better than the TMobile service, more to the point three of us were able to use it for web surfing and one person could stream video reasonably well, and since it was unlimited, it would have made a decent internet replacement for one person.

Location matters a lot though, a service that works great in one spot can be utter crap in another.

 

[Maddog2020]

Hey Swordsmith, was the Verizon hotspot 3G or 4G, makes a big difference. My 4G is at least 10 times faster then when I had 3G.

 

[Swordsmith]

The Verizon was 4G, the TMobile one was 3G, there's no 4G service at my house (the Verizon thing I used was at a job site down in Waxahachie)

 

[Aldakoopa]

I called my cable company to cancel my cable and keep the internet so I could save some money, and instead they offered to cut my price down by $40 for "6 months"... It's been 9 months now and it hasn't gone back up yet. I'm not calling to complain...

 

[Maddog2020]

Update on the experiment

Verizon updated my phone (Jelly Bean for Android), and now blocks wireless hotspot.

Now I must tether my PC to my phone using a USB cable. Still works great, just a little more of a pain in the buttox.

To get other devices internet access I turned my wireless router back on and connect my PC to it. I had to also had to set my PC to share the internet connection from my phone. Now to allow other devices to use my PC's internet connection through my phone, I connect to the wireless network and use my PC's IP address as the default gateway and DNS server. Seems to work good so far.