Well we did it. I contacted AT&T and we cancelled U-verse TV. The only thing left with them is our internet. When I called they of course tried to come up with various packages to try and keep me with them. All of them would cost more than just cutting the cord and going with what we have set up for streaming. In the process they did bump our internet access from 18mb to 24mb for the same cost we are paying now.
We were thinking of moving to Toast.net for internet service, but now I need to do some evaluation to be sure. The upside of Toast.net is that there is no data cap. AT&T has a 1000gb cap. From studying our usage so far it looks like we would able to fairly easily stay under the cap. They both charge $60 for 24mb download speed. But I think we might be able to use 18mb download without any buffering issues. During our testing period we did not notice any buffering. If we do decide that 18mb will work, Toast.net offers 18mb for $50 a month with no cap. We will have to think about that some more. It might be worth going to Toast.net just to avoid the data cap.
So how much do we think we will actually be able to save by cord cutting? Here is the breakdown we are looking at:
Here is how our AT&T bill breaks down:
$7.61 Account charges (internet gateway box and taxes)
$151.83 U-verse TV
$57.00 Internet
$34.52 Landline Phone
$250.96 Total
We moved to Vonage for landline phone for $20.30 per month: $34.52 – $20.30 = $14.22 savings
Internet charges went up to $60.00 since we no longer have U-verse TV: $57.00 – $60.00 = -$3.00 additional cost
Now we have to do some math to see our TV savings. I am only calculating the ongoing monthly charges since we own the hardware. $5.00 per month for Tablo TV Guide. We could save if we went with an annual fee of $50.00 per year, or we could just pay $150 and have a lifetime subscription. We will probably take one of those routes soon, but for now I’ll go with $5.00 a month.
Sling TV: $60.00 per month = $40 for Orange + Blue, $5.00 for Lifestyle package, $10 for Sports, $5 for cloud DVR. We will likely drop the Sports package after the Olympics are over, but for now I’ll go with the $60 per month.
TV totals $65.00 per month: $151.83 – $65.00 = $86.83 savings
That brings our total monthly savings to $98.05 per month or $1176.60 per year.
Our total hardware cost was:
$99.00 Roku #1
$50.00 Roku #2 (Sling TV discount)
$259.99 Tablo 4-Tuner
$87.45 External hard drive for Tablo
$154.96 High-gain wide angle antenna plus 50 feet cable
$651.40 Total hardware cost
If you consider that we will be saving $1176.60 per year, we will have the hardware cost paid off in just over 6 months.
So far we are happy with the results, we will see how it goes going forward.
Luhman-ations 