Dismantling fios triple

Our current fios triple dip is $230. I think this is way, way, way, too high! So I have embarked on a campaign to reduce this by as much as is reasonable for us.

Our first move will be to cancel our landline. We both have cell phones that handle the majority of our needs. I can’t think of a single advantage that a landline has over a cell phone!! Cell phones also have more functions and convenience than a landline. In essence our landline has become a paid for call center for spammers, scammers and wrong dial calls.

I’ve set a target date of Aug. 25.

Replacing ISP and streaming services will be dealt with in separate threads later.

If I’m missing something please let me know.

I looked into that recently.  For us building a new plan without the landline actually cost more.  But our service is only about $175 per month.

I was also faced with paying more for same service without a landline. I dont think I even have a working phone jack left in my house. I was gonna go with a smart TV but decided to get a firestick instead. 

I'm not sure what type of internet yo have. I have 100/100 and it handles what we do fine. I work from home, make numerous video calls, and all of our TV watching is streaming (except when the Giants are playing.)

That's $49.99/month.

We pay for Max (Ad Free) - $15.99, Apple TV+ $6.99, and Amazon Prime - $14.99 including all the other benefits of Prime. 

So around $88 a month.

However, we share out the Max with friends, and in return we have Hulu (ad-free), Sling, Disney+, and we used to have Netflix before they tightened the reins on account sharing.

Before ditching your landline, I'd look into setting up a Google Voice account using your current landline number. Google Voice is great for having an "official" number that isn't your cell, and for filtering certain kinds of calls. I set mine up after I ditched the landline and lost that number, but it was very useful to have after I was canned from my old job in 2017. It costs nothing for US calls, and since 2017 I've added exactly $20 to my account for calling the UK at 1c/minute and I still have $4.99 left.

I got the 1Gig service,  multiple family house with wifi included in tenant rent. At least 3 PS4's and 5's as well as laptops and I think 4 firesticks now. When I upgraded and got the new router the tech comment "jeez are you giving out internet to the neighborhood" due to amount of devices connected. 

@DanDietrich @the 18thletter

THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR TIME!

As I mentioned I will be starting another thread about dismantling cable shortly. I hope you’ll join in there too.

The funny thing about this is the timing.  My wife and I sat down yesterday and wrote out a spreadsheet of our costs and subscriptions.  We are comfortable, but with the strike we have no income for a while, so we don't want to bleed money into forgotten things.  I have wanted to change our set up for a while, but boy it's hard.  For example, we get Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ free on FiOS because of our cell phone deal with Verizon.  So if we change to Comcast we lose that freebie.  We don't need the phone, but our deal is too good to give up.  We have 150/150 service and any change adds at least $50 to.our service.  But we didn't find any forgotten expenses, so that was good.

Netflix, or any carrier should be called once a year with the request to cancel service. In many instances, you will be offered a lower fee to stay. 

DanDietrich said:

The funny thing about this is the timing.  My wife and I sat down yesterday and wrote out a spreadsheet of our costs and subscriptions.  We are comfortable, but with the strike we have no income for a while, so we don't want to bleed money into forgotten things.  I have wanted to change our set up for a while, but boy it's hard.  For example, we get Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ free on FiOS because of our cell phone deal with Verizon.  So if we change to Comcast we lose that freebie.  We don't need the phone, but our deal is too good to give up.  We have 150/150 service and any change adds at least $50 to.our service.  But we didn't find any forgotten expenses, so that was good.

why not stay with Verizon internet only? Get some fire sticks for the dumb tv sets and watch all your shows. 

Because we want SNY and MSNBC.  We already have firesticks which is part of why I was reviewing everything.  But faster internet with a lower tier of channels was still more expensive.  What got me into the "bind" is that a few years ago when playing the threaten to cancel game with Verizon they agreed to freeze my price permanently.  It's pretty reasonable overall, I think, considering what I want to keep.

DanDietrich said:

Because we want SNY and MSNBC.  We already have firesticks which is part of why I was reviewing everything.  But faster internet with a lower tier of channels was still more expensive.  What got me into the "bind" is that a few years ago when playing the threaten to cancel game with Verizon they agreed to freeze my price permanently.  It's pretty reasonable overall, I think, considering what I want to keep.

look into Fubo. 

That's $75 per month.  Then I'd have to add Showtime and HBO.  I don't think that there is a savings there.

Fubo app is free. You can download it onto the fire stick and watch msnbc and sny. Check it out.

@ridski, @DanDietrich

https://go.verizon.com/residential/fios/internet

https://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet/plans?INTNAV=tNav%3APlans%3AHomeInternet

Looks like there may be some better options available.  Both seem to faster service at or below your current cost.  

I’ve heard that verizon and tmobile are fighting to sign up great numbers of subscribers for the 5g system they’re building.  Also, tmobile is a new player in the internet market.  So there are deals to be had.  300/300 for $50 at vzn same should be negotiable.

Jaytee said:

Fubo app is free. You can download it onto the fire stick and watch msnbc and sny. Check it out.

The app is free, but after the free trial period the programming is not free.  How are you getting it without paying?

Apollo_T said:

@ridski, @DanDietrich

https://go.verizon.com/residential/fios/internet

https://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet/plans?INTNAV=tNav%3APlans%3AHomeInternet

Looks like there may be some better options available.  Both seem to faster service at or below your current cost.  

I’ve heard that verizon and tmobile are fighting to sign up great numbers of subscribers for the 5g system they’re building.  Also, tmobile is a new player in the internet market.  So there are deals to be had.  300/300 for $50 at vzn same should be negotiable.

While those Verizon plans are starter plans, it did get me to look into what it would cost to upgrade to 300/300, and apparently it's nothing but 2 hours with a chat rep and switching my autopay from CC to debit card, so thanks for that.

@DanDietrich,  you mentioned above that you have a 150/150 plan.  Price, please.

@ridski,  I like your idea of retaining a ‘land’ number.  I was thinking, at one point, of converting to mobile with unlimited talk & text at the cheapest possible rate.  Why do you have so many services?  

I ask because we’ll probably start a 30 day free trial with Hulu early aug.  We’re a pair of old farts who only watch HD tv…no gaming, no 4k, no sports.  We don’t think we need Live streaming.  I’m hopeful that just hulu and maybe one other service will be enough.

Also, we have an original actiontech router.  It seems to work OK but, it’s from the time of Lincoln.  Anyone have a router rec?  Perhaps something built in this millennium? 

Thanks every one.

Apollo_T said:

@DanDietrich,  you mentioned above that you have a 150/150 plan.  Price, please.

@ridski,  I like your idea of retaining a ‘land’ number.  I was thinking, at one point, of converting to mobile with unlimited talk & text at the cheapest possible rate.  Why do you have so many services?  

I ask because we’ll probably start a 30 day free trial with Hulu early aug.  We’re a pair of old farts who only watch HD tv…no gaming, no 4k, no sports.  We don’t think we need Live streaming.  I’m hopeful that just hulu and maybe one other service will be enough.

Also, we have an original actiontech router.  It seems to work OK but, it’s from the time of Lincoln.  Anyone have a router rec?  Perhaps something built in this millennium? 

Thanks every one.

If you have an old Actiontec router and ditch cable, you'll be paying 5-15 per month renting that router for no real reason. You can buy a new router, but your house will determine what type and whether you'll need range extenders. I have a small house and a Netgear gigabit router from Home Depot does the job fine. The only difference is you'll have to switch from a coaxial cable to an Ethernet line from your Verizon ONT box. 

Not sure if you're asking me why I have so many services. Do you mean the streaming services?

I'm lucky enough to work from home every day, so I don't need an unlimited data plan for my cell, mostly on wifi all day. But I do have a Mint Mobile $15/month 5GB plan, and I barely ever go above that. If I'm out of the country, I just get a sim card there with unlimited data.

Edited to add, Google Voice isn't a landline. It's an app on my iphone, which rings just like my regular cellphone if someone calls the number.

I pay for prime separtately

Netflix :  $16.52

Paramount : $9.99

Tivo: $10.65  Tivo is my tuner/DVR and also feeds my second TV upstairs.  I never use the DVR anymore.

Fios: $161.47.  This includes home phone, extreme HD tv package, 150/150 internet, HBO, Showtime, a cable card for my Tivo, and all taxes and BS fees

Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ are included free because I have Verizon cell service.

I use my own mesh router system.

I have not been able to beat this price.  If I move to optimum I have to pay for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+.  I always "want" faster internet, but I really don't need it.  I am a year away from my kid going to college, so all of the gaming leaves with him.

THANKS @DanDietrich, for being forthcoming about your prices; many folks are reluctant to say anything about $$$.

Here’s my break down- drawn from our June, 30 bill.

Land line.                                          $ 30

50/50Internet inc 3.00 router.             43 

Extreme HD TV. Inc Shotime                 83

   Equipment rental for TV.  (2 DVR)  37

Tax 6.00 & BS fees 32.00                     38

You’re right!!! Those fees are a lot of B$!  I’m curious about the cost of 150/150, if you don’t mind.  I hope a few other folks will show us their’s, too.

Our current hook-up is: Fios triple disaster, landline, 3 TVs, 2 Roku + 1 Fire Stick, 2 cell phones and 2 tablets, 2 old farts.  Virtually no sports, no 4k, no gaming and we’ll start streaming more.  I think we’ll get away with hulu(no ads) NOT live, and perhaps 1 other streaming service NOT live.  That’s why I’m amazed that other folks have a bunch of streaming services.  Am I missing something here?

I can't break the FiOS costs down more because it's an old package that I have locked in.  When I tried to upgrade the speed it would have meant starting in a new plan at much higher prices.  I'm not really complaining.  The FiOS price for me hasn't changed in 5 years or so.  And I think people are sold on more is better with speed, when they don't actually use it.  I have over 30 gizmos attached to my router, wired and wireless, and I am okay.  Of course they don't all draw lots of bandwidth, or operate simultaneously.

My husband loves the Tennis Channel and the Golf Channel. I keep trying to get him to downgrade our service, but he loves it so much. I won't let him add Hulu or Apple or some of the other services. He would pay a fortune above the fortune we are already paying to access all the services his friends are telling him about...

ETA: we have Netflix and Amazon Prime as well. Just put the sucker sticker on our foreheads...

Here’s an interesting bit of timing; a few days ago we received a letter from vzn about finding ways to lower our bill.  Interesting in that I’ve been checking out a lot of articles and YouTube videos about cord cutting, streaming and 5g internet routers.  Streaming services as well.  As I mentioned above vzn and tmobile are competing for as many 5g customers as they can sign up.  

Tmobile is a new player in the ISP market, especially with 5g.  They’re both offering some pretty attractive deals.  No contract, no hidden (B$)charges, no equipment rental, no price hikes for X years.  Everything that cable customers have hated for YEARS.  Plus both have generous allowances to cover early termination penalties.

Folks, consider poking around their websites, look for good deals, put together a plan.  Then call your current cable company and ask for a better deal, “Like the one I can get from XYZ ISP.”  I’d ask for the retention dept. straight away.

I have a bunch more work to do before I call to cancel just about everything.

ANYONE WHO MAKES SOME PROGRESS OR CHANGES ***PLEASE POST HERE***

Apollo_T said:

 That’s why I’m amazed that other folks have a bunch of streaming services.  Am I missing something here?

I pay for 3 streaming services, and get 2 more from friends. The shows I like are on different services, and I have no use for live cable TV at all. I watch TV for about 3-4 hours a night (unless we find a bingeable show that keeps us up late) and hilariously I probably spend more time watching UK shows on YouTube.

We were paying just under $180 for our Fios service, on an ancient package: 50/50 internet ($60), "Extreme HD TV" ($85), $20 for HBO Max, $5 for a cable card, $25 in surcharges and fees, and we had $15 in discounts ($5 from my wife's employer as a "Verizon connections" discount and another $10 for paper-free billing/auto-pay). Oh, we also had free Showtime -- pretty sure I only watch one thing there (The Chi), but we have it through Paramount+ anyway.

(The cable card is to power our TiVo Bolt & TiVo minis, which we own & use instead of Verizon's boxes; we can't use Verizon's pay per view as a result, but we separately have Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, and Paramount, so, it doesn't matter. TiVo service is something like $13 a month, paid annually; the Bolt was probably $300 and the minis like $50 each.)

So I called a couple weeks ago and said, essentially, hey, we've been customers forever, what can we do to increase internet speed while getting the payment lower? I was willing to give up a lot of TV channels (all those streaming services), but they of course make it really difficult to do that but still receive the couple of channels you DO watch, so we ended up basically saving $15 a month, new estimated bill of just under $165, for ... 

• 300/300 internet ($60, same cost as the 50/50 we were getting.) (The 300 down is real; the upload speed is more like 150, I'm finding, at best.) 
• "More Fios TV 3.0" ($109, $15 more than the old package and largely the same; I've noticed the Game Show network is gone (hey, Family Feud is a riot), and that's all I've noticed.)
• $15 for Max ($5 cheaper) 
• $5 for the cable card (same price) 
• $25 in discounts (the $10 paper-free/auto-pay discount now applies separately to both data & TV)
• No charge for the brand new (and really good) router

I separately bought a couple of $35-ish refurbished routers from Amazon to combine with the new Fios router for a homemade mesh-ish network, which is working great. 

Now, all that said, I'm realizing they don't disclose any "surcharges and fees," and I'm currently paying $25 for those, so I suspect my actual monthly price is going to end up being $10 higher than before when we get the first new bill in a few days -- you really can't win -- but at least my internet is much, much faster. 

(I did look at Comcast, which is our other possible provider here in WO -- I really hated them before we got Fios so much -- and their website pricing looked like it would be about $20 less than what I'm allegedly now paying for Fios -- $145ish versus $165ish -- for similar service, for two years, before reverting back to the same $185ish I think I'm looking at now.) 

KarenMarlowe said:

My husband loves the Tennis Channel and the Golf Channel. I keep trying to get him to downgrade our service, but he loves it so much. I won't let him add Hulu or Apple or some of the other services. He would pay a fortune above the fortune we are already paying to access all the services his friends are telling him about...

ETA: we have Netflix and Amazon Prime as well. Just put the sucker sticker on our foreheads...

I've got to say, having so many of these things ... Apple is worth it to me because the ratio of good shows (Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, Severance, Slow Horses, and oh my god Silo) to crappy shows is unusually high (I think you also get 3 months free with a new apple device, if you're due for a new phone), and Hulu is also worth it to me because it has both a really deep library of both current and older shows and a few really good originals (The Great, Reservation Dogs, and oh my god The Bear) as well. Oh, and the new Justified show. 

Hi,

I spent an unfortunately time todayy trying to find out if either vzn or t-mobil offer 5g service around here.  Seems they don’t.  Has anyone had a different experience?  Does anyone use 5g at work?  Thoughts?

Not being funny but isn’t T-Mobile 5G just a big cellular hotspot for internet? Verizon won’t offer it because they have actual fios here (Maplewood). Either your options are Optimum (SO) or Verizon (Map) or another company that will give you a hotspot device.  If your phone has unlimited data and you’re in a good broadcast area, just use your phone as a hotspot. If you’re not, I don’t see how a 5G plan is going to be better. Where does the internet come from? Does T-Mobile put a tower outside your house?

Jaytee said:

Fubo app is free. You can download it onto the fire stick and watch msnbc and sny. Check it out.

Fubo is definitely not free. The lowest plan is $74.99 per month. They offer a free 7-day trial.

@ridski, “…isn’t T-Mobile 5G just a big cellular hotspot for internet?”  That’s the way I see it.  It may be a matter of volume.  Streaming 4k videos and games to a whole bunch of homes simultaneously may far exceed the capacity of a local tower, which may be geared to handling a bunch of short phone calls.

From what I’ve seen (remember I’m a technotwit) it appears that the comps provide a larger 5g router which receives signal, wirelessly, and then wi-fis it within your home.  This bypasses all the cabling.   They supply a 5g router with the service and, if I’m right about how it all works, that’s how they advertise ‘NO Equipment rental’  there is none!!! The IPs also have gone to NO hidden fees and NO contracts as a response to the market’s many complaints about these.  And pushed there by competitors.

Ultimately, I’d like to work out those same terms for a fios internet only acct.  Then we’ll take care of TV as we want.  Neither of us sees a need for a ‘live’ service.  But we may start there as just that a starting point.

BTW, I mentioned above that fios sent us a letter about knocking down our bill.   Has anyone else received one?  Any follow up?  I want to go into that negotiation with a lot of info in pocket.