In March 2021, my TV cable bill (which included internet and home phone service) was nearly $200 per month. This might not seem like a lot to many people whose phone bills alone exceed that amount, but when you consider that there were two people in our house and we used the phone no more than two to three times a week—mostly local calls—and only one of us watched TV regularly, and then only a daily soap opera.
It’s been said that good can sometimes come from disaster. I now know that to be true. On March 31, our house caught fire. No one was hurt, but the house and ninety-five percent of its contents were completely destroyed. While we hunted for a new residence, we moved in with our daughter’s family, where we quickly discovered that they had sworn off cable and only had internet and got their entertainment through streaming services.
That didn’t bother me because I’d been getting most of my entertainment via my computer anyway since that’s where I spent most of my time as a freelance writer. The soap opera watcher took a bit longer—the discovery that some soap operas, including the popular Korean ones, helped.
So, when we finally bought a new house, we made the decision to forego cable. We also decided that our mobile phones were sufficient for communication purposes. Our entertainment is now totally internet-based with two smart TVs that give us almost a thousand free channels to choose from, including local and international channels as well as the standard streaming platforms like Netflix, etc.
It’s been two years since we ‘cut the cable,’ so to speak and amazingly we don’t miss it. Most importantly, our $80 per month internet bill is a lot easier to swallow. Even if they increase the internet fees, as these companies are prone to do, it’ll be a long time before they’d dare raise it to what we were paying before.
Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? With so much available for one small fee, why on earth would anyone subscribe to the uber-expensive cable services? I don’t have an answer, and as time passes, I’ll eventually quit even asking the question. Cable TV, what’s that? Like the Beta video system that was extinct almost before it launched, I think cable is heading the way of the dodo bird. But, unlike the dodo bird, I don’t think anyone will mourn its passing. | NWI
