I just canceled my land-line telephone and satelite TV

I have finally gotten sick of paying $150 (sometimes more) a month a month for our TV/phone/ISP service from AT&T. I canceled it all and switched to much faster internet for $24.99 a month. Signed up for Hulu Plus for $7.99 a month and Skype phone service for about $2.50 a month. Hulu doesn't offer everything but it offers a staggering number of shows, both old and new. It seems to offer enough programs for us, and we can watch any program at any time we want. With Skype, we can call someone's land-line or cell phone anywhere in the US or Canada with unlimited minutes and no long-distance charges.

My new payments all add up to $35.48 which amounts to about $115 a month in savings. We are going to use that savings to buy an Apple TV this month so we can watch Hulu on our TV.

So far, I am having no regrets. Anyone else done this? Any pitfalls?

 

What internet are you using and is it high speed?

Once people figure out that they can get cheaper alternative services for 75% less money, there is going to be a landslide of people jumping the traditional ships like AT&T, Communistcast, Verizon and others.

MajicJack offers inexpensive phone service, with or without a computer.
magicJack PLUS - FREE Local and Long Distance

Virgin Mobile offers cheap cell plans with unlimited internet and texting.
Virgin Mobile | Shop No Contract Plans

High traditional ripoff prices have created a lot of POPs in the U.S. (pissed off people).

List your cheap infrastructural links here.

 

Yes, I am one of those POPs. There are no optical lines in my neighborhood so the fastest connection I could find was 6 Mbps. But that's about 5 times faster than what we had before.

 

So your Hulu box isn't attached to your TV? I thought a person could attach the box to the TV. I'm new to that stuff. What about football? lol

 

Maybe you can get a box with HULU, but I don't think it comes automatically. I just signed up, so maybe a box will come in the mail, don't know. Yes, football and live news would be a problem, but we get pretty good digital TV from our antenna. For people without any air service, I'm not sure what could be done there. I don't really watch sports on TV anyway. I'm too busy mountain biking, surfing and hiking to do much passive sports watching. Weird, I know.

Does anyone know if there are online feeds of sports and live news out there somewhere?

 

Roku Streaming Player | Watch Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Crackle and More on Roku Player

Roku Streaming Players | Roku 2 HD Player, Roku 2 XD Player and Roku 2 XS Player

I use the Roku 2 XD (1080p) connected via HDMI for all my TVs. Links wirelessly over your home router.

There are other brands.

We also subscribe to Netflix.

The Roku has a lot of channels that are available. Do a search on the internet and you will find that many channels have been created.

Intuitive and easy setup.

I'm going to assume you understand the limitations of any internet telephony with regard to 911 services. If not, do some research.

 

Roku is the bomb...hulu and netflix are both available on it. With Roku I get byu tv, chow, crackle, news, Pandora, amazon, and a ton more. Haven't had a phone (land line) or cable/satelit in about 4 years.

 

No research needed, every page in the sign-up process warned that Skype is no good for emergency services. No big deal, we still all have cell phones with GPS and would be most likely to use those anyway.

 

I just bought a ROKU because of you two. I bought the bottom of the line model for $49 which still seemed to do everything I want. This model will not do HD, but I have a small TV and can't really tell the difference.

 

Any recommendations for cheap (but still halfway decent) internet services?

 

DSL Extreme $12.95. Not the fastest but really cheap.

 

I gave up cable when I moved to the country about 14 years ago. I have an outdoor antenna. No cost.
I gave up my landline about a year ago. I have only my cell dumb phone. $43 per month.
I may upgrade to a smart phone soon but the service will be an extra $30 per months.
I have DSL internet. $43 per month.
I have no regrets.

I currently use AT&T as it was the only provider getting reception at my house when I went cell only. I had Virgin before (on the Sprint network) with lousy reception. AT&T has as good or better coverage as any other provider.

 

Let us know how you like it. I forgot about one other thing. We have an Amazon Prime account and it has free stuff to watch, as well as pay per view type stuff, which can be picked up with the Roku.

 

Surf Doctor,

My Comcast bundle service contract ends in 3 weeks, and your post is intriguing. I am very interested in the Skype phone service. Please keep us posted.

Shawn

 

I have called a couple of landlines of relatives today to test it out and none of them could tell any difference. It worked perfect, sounds great, and I'm only paying $2.50 a month! That's with unlimited long distance to US and Canada included. My wife is from Canada and calls her parents regularly, so it's perfect.

I noticed that you can buy a traditional looking cordless phone that plugs into your computer so you can talk as you always have done.

 

Here's what I'm looking at for Skype:

Online Number - Online Business Number with Voicemail - Skype

 

That looks like a good deal. It's cheap and seems much more flexible than traditional phone service.

 

Be careful with ROKU!!! We have one, and the Hulu channel sucks. It constantly freezes up and crashes. None of the other channels have this problem. In fact, if you go into the channel store and look at the ratings for Hulu, it's very low. Netflix, however, is fine.

My wife and I haven't had a landline phone in years. We figured there's no reason paying for one if we always have our cell phones on us. We get decent cell service, so we don't have to worry about dropped calls either. We had also done away with Cable TV, and just had high speed (15mbs) internet with cable. We used that for Hulu & Netflix. We were saving about $100 per month. Now we moved into the sticks, and the fastest internet available is 1.5mbs, so we can't do that anymore. We have DirecTV for the moment, but the cable company is working on this massive upgrade for the county. After they're done, we'll have access to everything we had before, and we plan to switch over from satellite. The downside to Hulu & Netflix type services is that you can get local channels. Sometimes I just wanted to watch the local news... Sure, we could get the over the air channels with an antenna, but living in the sticks makes that a bit hard.

-Matt

 

If you have amazon prime, some of their programming is free. You can find a student discount for prime.

 

I recommend checking out solidsignal.com. I filled out their Antenna Help Request Form and they recommended an antenna to me. It was one of their lower priced models so I figure they're honest. It has worked well for me.