I have home internet and a cellular plan, but I canceled cable this year.

I haven't had a TV for 15 years. There are much better uses for my time.

Currently you can get away with no having cable service, it's often cheaper. However the more people who abandon cable the more expensive the providers will make the internet service which replaces it. Really by cutting cable you're getting a temporary savings and contributing to what will be a major cost increase for internet service as the provideers try to make up the capital loss from cable subscriptions.

This may be different in other countries where the cable/tv providers are not the same as the internet providers but in the US the only decent internet service providers are also Cable/Satelite providers.

I have never owned a cable plan, but in Germany we're forced to pay for TV anyways. 😵

Did live without an internet plan for a year, because I was subscribed to a HotSpot service and they forgot to disable my account after I cancelled them. That was the greatest year of my life. 😀

My cellphone plan is paid by my employer, so I don't have to worry about that, too.
I would never physically disconnect from mobile and internet, though. It's impossible in 2019. TV is obsolete media, but not these two.

In my opinion, YouTube Premium offers so much, I see it as my own "kind of" cable plan.

We've been streaming-only in our house for a couple of years - the TV antenna went with a renovation. But now some of the YouTubers I watch have started inserting ads into their shows, so as much as things change, they also stay the same.

I purchased a cell phone in the mid 1990's (an original analog Nokia 100) because I did an hours highway drive to and from work. The ability to contact friends while away from the house was very useful. These days I just use an old cheap ZTE phone with no contracts. Quite a few younger people get their internet only on their phones these days.

Since the switch to digital TV I get more channels now with a rooftop antenna then I ever did. Mostly I just download TV shows so I can watch them at night before bed without commercials (no DVR here). I use Netflix both DVD and streaming. I was an early adopter of DirectTV (back when you had to pay a ton of money and mount the dish yourself) and we had cable in the house since 1976, cable modem since it came around in 2000. These days we just use Dish Network and 100Mb Comcast for internet.

I think the generation that is cutting the cord is shooting itself in the foot long term. The only reason we have so many TV shows these days is because they make money. Cutting cable and satellite is just making those shows unprofitable and channels will eventually go dark. Look at movies these days, you just get a few big budget blockbusters and a few small indie movies while the mainstream films have kind of vanished. Over the air channels have seen their ratings keep dropping and sooner of later they will be unprofitable so get used to cheap reality shows. While Netflix has some popular home made stuff most is crap and they cannot continue to dump cash to keep making all this new content with competition from other streaming networks.

Unknown_K wrote:

I think the generation that is cutting the cord is shooting itself in the foot long term. The only reason we have so many TV shows these days is because they make money. Cutting cable and satellite is just making those shows unprofitable and channels will eventually go dark. Look at movies these days, you just get a few big budget blockbusters and a few small indie movies while the mainstream films have kind of vanished. Over the air channels have seen their ratings keep dropping and sooner of later they will be unprofitable so get used to cheap reality shows. While Netflix has some popular home made stuff most is crap and they cannot continue to dump cash to keep making all this new content with competition from other streaming networks.

Speaking only for me, I don't care about TV at all. If the only thing that is left over are shitty reality TV I won't know the difference anyway. 99% of the content I consume these days is on youtube, with only the occasional show on netflix.

Taking a step back a little, the amount of TV people consumed between the 50's and 2000's is kind of crazy. Growing up, I watched a lot of sitcoms and late night tv with my Dad. I remember TV being the only thing to do at 8:00PM on a weekday. Television was just something to put on because it was slightly better than boredom. In the modern day I don't have that problem. There is a nearly infinite amount of content (and interaction around that content) geared toward all of my weird and eccentric interests. Like retro computers for example 😀. I spent an hour last night watching a slap fighting tournament in Croatia. Mainstream TV is too dumded down, too scripted, too interjected with adds and fluff, too similar to everything else in the same medium, and not interesting or varied enough to over hold me attention again.

There is still clearly a market for highly polished series and movies, I just think the platform for them will eventually consolidate on the web. I haven't sought out a show on cable in at least ten years, and culturally I feel like I have missed basically nothing. Every show or piece of entertainment that people have been talking about have all either been films or TV shows available on the internet, and increasingly even more so viral content and web series.

Yes, Our cable provider has put a limit on data over the internet so we can only watch a few gigabyte of movie streams before we have to pay an additional charge for going over the data plan.
This reminds me of the early 1990s when dial-up internet would add additional charges if users went over the dial-up internet data plan.

Well in Estonia we do not really need any WiFi, my mobile dataplan provides me 50GB domestically, and plus 5GB over entire europe for just 7EUR a month, plus i have limitless phone calls and SMS. Last phone had a faulty WiFi and Bluetooth chip, i did not even care, only sometime i coud not provide a hotspot.

I have not watched normal TV for years, i download all my series and movies in a bulk, i have multitude of 128GB USB sticks that coast only like 20EUR a piece, and can watch them with my TV or if somewere are older TV-s i use a Raspberry PI 3 with Retropie and KODI, and navigate with a SNES replica game controller. And i like to watch old stuff, so i to not download any new content that mutch. Well we live in eastern europe, so i do not have to be affraid to "torrent".

I don't know how you could survive on 50GB a month. Here's my typical household usage and this is not even counting mobile usage:

EDIT: My mistake you are talking about phone data usage only. I get 40GB a month and I think I rarely go over 10 a month for mobile usage.

Cyberdyne wrote:

Well in Estonia we do not really need any WiFi, my mobile dataplan provides me 50GB domestically, and plus 5GB over entire europe for just 7EUR a month, plus i have limitless phone calls and SMS. Last phone had a faulty WiFi and Bluetooth chip, i did not even care, only sometime i coud not provide a hotspot.

I can confirm. Same here.

Though, one remark: Estonia is less in the east than Finland and less in the south than Denmark. My tongue can't take appropriate shape to call Estonia eastern Europe. 😀

I somehow think the unlimited data plans are slowly coming to an end. I use maybe 8 Gb of data on my phone/month and around 100-150 Gb at home and the combined price (at the moment) for both (2 x 4G 100Mbps) is around 28€ ($30). The roaming fees in Europe are my concern as they must jack up the local prices at one point when all the tourist pour in. Still, at the moment I'm happy with the pricing as I remember my first 512 Kb ADSL line from 2001 that cost me around 50e a month!

GigAHerZ wrote:

Cyberdyne wrote:

Well in Estonia we do not really need any WiFi, my mobile dataplan provides me 50GB domestically, and plus 5GB over entire europe for just 7EUR a month, plus i have limitless phone calls and SMS. Last phone had a faulty WiFi and Bluetooth chip, i did not even care, only sometime i coud not provide a hotspot.

I can confirm. Same here.

Though, one remark: Estonia is less in the east than Finland and less in the south than Denmark. My tongue can't take appropriate shape to call Estonia eastern Europe. 😀

Hey Slovenia is allso Eastern Europe. But look where it is located. I include all countries, not for their geografic location, but geopolitical situation after WW2. And also their more liberal priracy law enforcement. Hey if you go online with your mobile phone in France, England, Germany, and there is a torrent movie downloading, you may get a visit from the police, simple as that. In USA and Canada and all Western Europe you have to use a VPN, but all normal have some kind on monthly payment. Eastern Europe and Asia do not have that kind of "problem". I do not promote piracy, i just tell it like it is, in the real world.

I didn't have a cellphone until 2004 and I probably wouldn't have had one for quire a bit longer if I didn't require one for university... every group project was like "exchange your cell phone numbers" ... and I was like "uuuuh... guess I'll have to get one".

and I didn't have a smartphone until 2014, when I got one exclusively for internet, and still used my old flip phone to be "reachable".
well my flip phone's speaker died last year and would I have found a small enough replacement I would have repaired it (already had it open and everything, but didn't find any fitting replacement part)... so I since switched to a single device, but I still don't really use it as a phone, I almost exclusively use it for internet access... which is more common nowadays anyways I guess.

Right, money that used to go to film and music companies now goes to telecoms companies. Swings and roundabouts. There is no free lunch.

Haven't touched satellite/traditional TV for a long time, since personal computers took over as a media station, everyone is at their own PCs 😜 which may not always be a good thing. My first cellphone was in 2004, and only switched to a smartphone in 2016. I try to keep social apps on the smartphone minimal because I do hate these notifications and unread indicators.. it's harder to get off social media when most of the world moved to whatsapp/facebook etc for communication and taking over old school forum format. For me, the Internet journey started with a 56k modem and ever since it's no leaving the web unless you retreat like a hermit. It's like the song: "you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave!"

svfn wrote:

For me, the Internet journey started with a 56k modem and ever since it's no leaving the web unless you retreat like a hermit. It's like the song: "you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave!"

I recall listening to BBC Radio 1 in late 1999 and hearing a news report about (IIRC) a man in California who spent a whole month without leaving his house thanks to the web - he did his groceries online, bought books and DVDs online, ordered pizza online, etc. I remember it sounding so futuristic. I don't know if it's me getting old, the march of progress making it old-hat, the web being hijacked by corporate and government surveillance... now it's just a nightmare you can't wake up from.

People are incredulous when I have to explain I don't have a phone. As a teen, my parents thought I spent too long at my computer online - now it's abnormal not to have it constantly on your person, which is why no-one can ever seem to walk away from a spat on Twitter. Design your own prison.

Big Pink wrote:

I recall listening to BBC Radio 1 in late 1999 and hearing a news report about (IIRC) a man in California who spent a whole month without leaving his house thanks to the web - he did his groceries online, bought books and DVDs online, ordered pizza online, etc. I remember it sounding so futuristic. I don't know if it's me getting old, the march of progress making it old-hat, the web being hijacked by corporate and government surveillance... now it's just a nightmare you can't wake up from.

People are incredulous when I have to explain I don't have a phone. As a teen, my parents thought I spent too long at my computer online - now it's abnormal not to have it constantly on your person, which is why no-one can ever seem to walk away from a spat on Twitter. Design your own prison.

Yeah now it's become something out of a Black Mirror episode 🤣 It's like any other addiction really to be always online for everything to work, checking your phone idly and social media is quite a big slice of that cake. For some, it may not seem like an issue since it became normal and acceptable once everyone else can't pull away either.

Oh yes, my mother complains about her husband, who is in his 60s, but never leaves his computer. He's as obsessed with it as any teenager.