How many of you have cut the cable?

[RichM]

Well, my kids hate not having cell phones now (and yes, they really probably are the only ones at their schools who don't have them) and my 13 year old is embarrassed that we don't have cable. The other kids don't mind so much - he is the one who hurts a bit over all we no longer have, the other kids don't seem to mind as much.

We were never big TV watchers so family time has not changed much. Not having good internet is more serious as 2 of my kids have online textbooks and crummy cricket internet is SOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOWWWW that oftentimes pages don't load properly. I wish we had fast enough internet to get Hulu and youtube videos.

You may want to consider Sprint. Not cheap at $60.00 / month, but in places where I can pull a 4G signal, I get speeds in the neighborhood of 8 - 10 Mb/s, which is about as fast as my cable Internet at home. Where I can only pull 3G, it's more like 2 Mb/s. Unlimited bandwidth for 4G, 5 GB/month for 3G.

I haven't owned a television for, oh, about seven years, and I haven't missed it. I just realized I wasn't watching it when I was packing to move to this place, so I gave it to the lady who lived downstairs in my old place. I do have cable Internet, however, mainly because of what I do for a living.

My daughter is grown and the old lady and I split a couple of years ago, so there's no one else to care about cable television (although friends who visit for the first time often wonder where the TV is). I do have two step-granddaughters (ages 12 and 10) who stay with me once in a while, but they're content with Hulu and Netflix. I also can pull OTA TV over any of the computers in the house if I want to, but I'm pretty sure the last time I did that was for the 2009 World Series.

Communications-wise, I have a Boost Mobile BlackBerry that costs $60.00/month for unlimited use, and goes down $5.00 every six months. I have two Vonage voice lines and a fax line for the business, that cost about $65.00/month combined. I also have a MagicJack number that I give to banks, department stores, any government agency for which I'm not an on-call contractor, and anyone else I don't care to hear from. That costs me $20.00 a year and I never, ever answer it. And I have the aforementioned wireless Internet from Sprint, which costs another $60.00/month.

Just as an aside, I actually hate telephones and being as "connected" as I am. If it weren't for my job, I wouldn't have all these services. The day I retire I plan to toss all of the phones in the trash. Cell, landline, BlackBerry, all of them. I don't want or need a phone, other than for work reasons. I'll also cancel the cable Internet and just keep the Sprint wireless (which I would have done already except that I need the cable Internet for the business VOIP lines). I'll keep the MagicJack number to give to people who insist that I provide a phone number, even if I never answer it.

-Rich