Reply 20 of 29, by SirNickity
I held out on a home phone for a while -- mostly because I had grand illusions of playing around with Asterisk for a home PBX, and needed something to connect it to. But I cancelled that probably 8 years ago, when I finally accepted that I don't really like talking to people on a phone anyway -- regardless how interesting the underlying technology may be.
Satellite TV went about four years ago. The only thing that changed is the billing, really, since now we pay our cable bill to Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. At least it's a little more flexible, although from time to time I shake my head at how shoddy the experience can be at any arbitrary moment -- like getting locked out when travelling abroad, or just dumb website design and the tendency to default to jumping right into something else as soon as the ending theme song starts. I guess most people just don't have any attention span, but I like to reflect for a moment on what I just saw before getting distracted by the next bright shiny image.
What I'm really concerned about is how this shift in distribution plays out long-term. I don't mind having three providers, but it kinda sucks losing access to certain shows because their network decided they want to start their OWN streaming service now. I'm just not going to subscribe to fifteen content producers independently. Just no. Maybe someday it will all coalesce again, and we'll be right back to cable TV but with a new name. More than anything, I just don't trust content providers and their constant bickering and concern above all else with rights and ownership. I've got way too much beloved media (music, books, games, movies) that now exist in a legal no-man's land and would be inaccessible if I didn't have a tangible copy that can't be withdrawn by a random board meeting. I suppose I will just have to get used to missing out on things. Maybe that's healthy anyway.
Mobile Internet is definitely getting remarkably good these days. Just spent a couple weeks on the other side of the pond, and unlike last time I left home, where I was locked into a contract with my domestic provider, I got to buy a holiday SIM card and enjoy 8GB of data anywhere. It really makes navigating and paying fares and discovering new places so much easier. IME, the cell providers usually do a better job of assuring quality service than local hospitality WiFi -- which is often next to useless, if not completely. I still don't see how it can completely take over for wired Internet service (to include extension to private WiFi hotspots) since the air is a shared medium. If we all used it exclusively, it would be saturated beyond usability at low frequencies, and dependent on a ton of ultra short-range infrastructure at higher frequencies, so either way not ideal. That said, LTE is capable of minor miracles and 5G is only supposed to up the ante. We'll see I guess. I once worried about how we were supposed to get more than 56Kb/sec over a copper phone line, and that has been solved to an extent I couldn't have even imagined back then, so I presume it'll all work out.