I’ve read countless posts of people ditching cable. It never really resonated with me because I enjoy the entertainment I get from television. But the availability of a new internet service started a ball rolling that will end with me bringing a pile of cable boxes, remotes, and a cable modem into my cable company office to discontinue service.
Internet
About a year ago a fiber optic internet service provider started installing infrastructure within my city. I received an ad in the mail promoting a rate on their gigabit ethernet service that is $4 cheaper than what I’m currently paying for cable broadband. In layman’s terms, by switching to the fiber based provider I now get 10x faster internet for less than what I’m paying now.
Out of Pocket Difference: -$4
Cable vs Streaming
With a our new very fast, high bandwidth internet service we looked into if we could save money subscribing to a streaming service in place of subscribing to cable television. We found that YouTube TV has every channel we actively watch if we add the sports package. Switching to this costs $2 more than the cable television package we currently have.
Out of Pocket Difference: +$2
Taxes and Fees
This is where the savings starts to show up.
With service through our cable provider, we pay several charges such as a broadcast TV surcharge, sales tax, franchise fee, and FCC administration tax. The total amount of taxes and fees we pay monthly to our cable provider is $37.76
The taxes and fees charged by the fiber internet provider and YouTube television combined total only $15.55.
Out of Pocket Difference: -$22.21
Equipment Rental
For cable, each television requires a cable box. We had 5 boxes, which we rented for $7.99 each per month for a total of $39.95. Add in $19.99 for DVR service and we were paying $59.94 a month to use their equipment.
With the YouTube TV over fiber solution we pay a big fat zero in equipment fees. We do need internet streaming service access on each of our televisions, however we already had an Amazon Fire Stick on each set to access other services.
Out of Pocket Difference: -$59.94
Summary:
Adding up the out of pocket differences, by dumping our cable company and streaming YouTube TV over our new fiber internet provider we will be saving $84.15 each month. By doing we actually have a better solution:
- All the channels we actively watch
- 10x faster internet
- No more cable boxes / remotes
- Unlimited DVR space
- Cloud based DVR vs cable box based local DVR
That last one is actually really nice. What it means is, because shows we record are stored in the cloud, we can access them anywhere we sign into YouTube TV (Amazon Fire Stick, computer, etc). With our current solution, if something is recorded in the basement, that’s where we have to go to watch it.
Our cable and internet service through our cable provider has been a fixture in our lives for over 20 years. It would have been easily to just keep doing what we’re doing because it works. But with a little bit of one time convenience to switch providers we will save a significant amount of money each month.
How about you EOD Nation, have you cut the cord with your cable company?
