My triple-play (phone, cable, high speed internet) bill this month from RCN:
High-Speed Cable, including sales tax & cable modem rental -- $43.16;
Basic Cable TV, including various taxes & HDTV converter box rental -- $57.85; and
Telephone, including various taxes and fees (no long distance minutes) -- $29.53.
Totaling $130.54. What do I get rid of?
I'm thinking of getting rid of the telephone. Maybe going with Gizmo for $35 per year plus 1 cent per minute for outgoing calls. No 911 service through Gizmo, though I could use my cell phone for that. Or I could wait until Google gives it all to us for free.
I could get rid of cable TV, but I watch a lot of sports during the summer and fall. Maybe I'll try to dig out that antenna again.
I just have a cable modem and VoIP via SunRocket ($200/year flat rate). I haven't been all that impressed with SunRocket's reliability or quality so far, but I did get a nice cordless phone with two handsets out of the deal. I don't watch much TV so I cancelled the basic cable I had. What I do watch I just download and watch on XBox Media Center.
If you like to run BitTorrent or other software that likes to keep your upstream bandwidth maxed out, definitely look into running QoS on your router. I use OpenWRT on a WRT54G with a QoS script I wrote myself and it works great.
Posted by: Sean Lynch | February 23, 2006 at 05:14 PM
OK, I'm cheap. $200/year sounds like a lot of money. There are taxes beyond that too? The question to me is whether E911 and keeping my current phone number is worth $165/year.
I like to do BitTorrent, so perhaps I will get a router/adapter like the following...
http://sipphone.com/dlink/
Posted by: Daniel Schmelzer | February 24, 2006 at 11:02 AM
In Ohio in the cities (no cable in the rural areas) it is less expensive to go to Satellite TV than cable. I'm always concerned about adding another electronic feature to my life as it all adds up. Our car came with an onstar feature that costs $200 per year if you choose to buy it just in case a person gets into a jam and needs help. You can then add another $200 for a phone in said car. A pay-as-you go cell phone costs less than that for any emergency situation.
Posted by: Jeanne Schmelzer | February 24, 2006 at 09:24 PM
I agree that a pay-as-you go cell phone is great for emergencies and any time where in the past I might have used a pay phone. I use Virgin Mobile, which gives me a phone number and 911 for $5/month (only $60/year). But a cell phone does no good unless I remember to charge it and bring it wherever I go. I do pretty well with that, but it is a bit like working for the technology rather than having my technology work for me. I want to have my cake, eat it too, but not pay much for it.
In my opinion, $400/year is pretty expensive for any electronic service, but it's not as if I won't pay for a good service. High speed internet costs $520/year and I am happy to pay that. It would be great to pay less and in the future I expect to pay less, but $480/year for the service seems fair. Rural Ohio should be getting wireless high speed internet in the next several years, and it wouldn't surprise me if the service were free.
On the other hand, cable TV for $750/year seems out of line with the service provided. Phone for $350 seems awfully high as well.
Posted by: Daniel Schmelzer | February 26, 2006 at 10:29 AM
Out here in rural Ohio there is a high speed internet service that the electricity company sponsors. It is called Wild Blue. It costs $300 just to sign up and mega bucks to keep it. They said that it is getting a lot of good attention.
Posted by: Jeanne Schmelzer | March 02, 2006 at 09:26 PM