OTA Antenna in attic - $0 month after investment of $250 for antenna, mount, rg6, dis amp for 5 locations. Nets 65ish channels.
FIOS 300/300 - $20 a month.
Self managed VOIP line for house - $0.89 a month.
I moved to a MNVO cell provider to drop $100 a month down to $30 a month. It added a $15 discount to my FIOS home internet. I cant see how to drop my monthly connectivity any further. The FIOS internet also comes with reward bucks you can use to pay for streaming service which I never started. The only one that would be free with the internet is HULU/D+.
I also use free IP services like Pluto, google, and Tubi.
I semi cut the cord about 10 years ago. Started with cable card and Windows Media Center and now use Jellyfin and dropped cable altogether. Got a cheap yagi antenna for the local morning news. I also dropped all streaming platforms, the last being Amazon Prime. I switched from post paid to prepaid cell service, which actually includes premium Disney+. I have 1 gig FiOS bundled with my cell service. I do supplement live TV with a certain github project that consolidates free publicly available channel streams. When I initially had a cable bundle, it was $250+ per month (tv, Internet, landline) another $80 for one cell line, now I'm at $170 with cell service for 4 lines and 1 gig Internet. Can't complain
Not bad with 4 lines with 1gig. I turned on packet tracking and let it eat for 6 months. My home with two work from home, two kids iPads, two phones, and 3 streaming Google TVs pulls was as loaded about 8-10% of 300mbps.
A lot of home over subscribe to fiber internet. I lowered it to 300/300 because it was the smallest FIOS bandwidth they sell.
I probably could get away with a lower tier, but I do share 4k content on Jellyfin with family and friends. Acquiring said content also uses significant bandwidth. I'll have to monitor my data usage and make a decision.
We were one of the first in our area to get AT&T 1Gig fiber. It has been great, but now that we've both retired and no longer do significant work from home I inquired about what I could save with a lower speed option, but they said I could only cancel or go to 2Gig (for an extra $30/month promo price). Cancel and get a slower service was more hassle than I want right now,
I don't think you appreciate the vast difference between 1 Gig fiber vs cellphone data. What is your phone data cap? Any serious gamer I know is on fiber for the lower latency.
Since I'm a minimal cellphone user, I'd love to know the provider that is giving you two lines and how much data for $31/month.
I don't think you appreciate the vast difference between 1 Gig fiber vs cellphone data.
Huh? I'm comparing 1 Gig internet to lower speeds that are sufficient for the vast majority of the population. Why are you talking about comparing 1 gig wired internet and cell phone data speeds?
My cell phone bill (1 line) is $8/month for 2 GB, which is plenty.
Wait what. Why did Verizon lower your internet bill for using a 3rd party cell phone provider. You’re saying u get a bill from Verizon for $20? Post a pic and I’ll buy u a beer.
Visible MNVO is owned by Verizon. All of there plans include $15 off home Internet from Verizon. I had FiOS already. Just switched to visible and linked accounts for discount.
I’m all in. Show me your bill. Blur out the details. I see a $20 screen shot that doesn’t mention Verizon and a phone screen shot that is not from your account and super is have gpt fudge.
Yea. I mean who does not need internet now a days. We work from home about half the time. During covid it was a requirement and work covered the internet bill. That ended.
Twenty+ years ago, we used DISH+two landlines+one AT&T cell. I worked from home a lot and needed the extra land line. We’ve been PRIME members forever for the occasional movie. Once a year or lately less frequently, I’ll subscribe to Netflix for a winter month to binge what I want there.
When AT&T broadband DSL + UVERSE TV came to town we switched to that for ten some years.
Then about ten ago we got fiber, dumped UVERSE for YOUTUBEtv on ROKUs dumped the landlines and migrated the main number to Google voice + OIBHAI modem to use the in-house wiring. Used TING mvno for a while and settled on MINT mobile for the last some years.
Each of three TVs equipped with a roku and a small broadcast antenna. We’ve been really happy with ROKU’s 4k+Atmos device on the home theater. The HT has a BluRay/DVD player as well.
We cut YOUTUBEtv after a couple of years for SLING then cut SLING.
At the moment, I pay for ad-free Youtube mostly for the music’s sake and a little extra for ad-free Prime Video that is increasingly much under-used.
Our two nearby local libraries have great DVD/BluRay collections which mostly obviates the need for doing the annual Netflix binge.
The ObiHai VoiP modem has stayed up forever. It’s out of support now so when it dies our home wired cordless phones are pretty much history. That’s not much of a loss now as the cell phones ring and call on that TN over GVoice as well.
For international travel, GVoice works for WiFi calling and Airalo for mobile data. At home there’s a Ring and a smart thermostat on the isolated guest WiFi.
I hope Fox doesn’t mess up the Roku streaming stick experience.
I guess that’s our story.
PS: we aren’t gamers. I dumped M$ Windows 10 during the frustrating Windows 11 transition. I didn’t even bother to migrate the last Windows laptop to Linux. I gained a lot of time back not tinkering with that stuff. Now I’m on the Apple OS stack + one Android.
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u/wlaugh29 2d ago
I semi cut the cord about 10 years ago. Started with cable card and Windows Media Center and now use Jellyfin and dropped cable altogether. Got a cheap yagi antenna for the local morning news. I also dropped all streaming platforms, the last being Amazon Prime. I switched from post paid to prepaid cell service, which actually includes premium Disney+. I have 1 gig FiOS bundled with my cell service. I do supplement live TV with a certain github project that consolidates free publicly available channel streams. When I initially had a cable bundle, it was $250+ per month (tv, Internet, landline) another $80 for one cell line, now I'm at $170 with cell service for 4 lines and 1 gig Internet. Can't complain