Feb 25 2017
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By Craig Bailey Personal Success

We Have Cut The Next Hardline!

It is FINALLY official. We have cut yet another hardline!

In prior posts (years ago now) I mentioned that we had cut our:

The next hardline I’ve been super anxious to cut is internet cable.

As of today, it is done!

We now connect all our devices (e.g., MacBooks, iPad, printer) over the wireless network offered by the “personal hotspot” on our iPhones.

Over the years I had been monitoring the cost of cellular data plans in the quest to do this. And, until recently the pricing has not been conducive to running a household off an iPhone’s personal hotspot.

Of late, we were paying about $100 / month for a “limited” data plan. During a recent transaction to upgrade Cindy’s iPhone we learned that Verizon Wireless now offers an UNLIMITED data plan for the same price as I was paying for the limited plan.

The switch to unlimited was easy!

Now, all I had to do was test. The testing involved:

  • Confirming we can stream Netflix movies over the personal hotspot, via a MacBook, connected to a TV and not have it stall out. Done!
  • Confirming Cindy can watch Netflix on her iPad, connected to her personal hotspot. Otherwise, there’d certainly be a murder (mine). Done!
  • Confirming we can hook-up our wireless printer and actually print to it. This was the one I was most worried about (unnecessarily). Done!

For years I have been using my personal hotspot to run my MacBook when I’m on the road or in some location that doesn’t offer WiFi, so I knew this would work fine. This includes sending/receiving email, surfing the web and running web conference calls with screen sharing.

The result: we are now ready to cut the next cord…

On calling the cable company to cancel they certainly did NOT want to let us go.

Cable Company: “Mr. Bailey, we can offer you the same plan for $64.99 / month, vs. the $74.99 you are paying now.”

Mr. Bailey: “Thanks, but I don’t need to pay anything more for internet since we already have it on our cell phones.”

Cable Company: “Well, we wouldn’t want you to ever be out of internet if a cell tower should go down. We can offer you a standard plan at $44.99 / month to make sure you are never without internet.”

Mr. Bailey: “I’ve been using cell phones for decades and have NEVER experienced an outage. Thank you, but we are good to go.”

It is done!

Now, let’s run this savings through the “cost / savings over time model.”

So, we “were” paying $75 / month for internet cable. Over 12 months that totals $900. And, over 10 years, that represents a cost / savings of $9,000!

Pack your bags Cindy. This will more than fund a few trips for two, to somewhere tropical 🙂

I love this!

The final cord to cut will be electricity. Once Verizon Wireless starts streaming that we’ll be good to go. To be clear, this is not all that far-fetched…

I remember during the early days of working for one of the first internet companies (back in the 90’s) the CEO said: “One day even lightbulbs will have an IP address” (a.k.a. be connected to the internet). That day has arrived!!!

All the best!

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