Bill Husted

Special to The Star

My wife and I have finally cut the cord. We canceled our cable TV subscription and got rid of our landline telephone.

And our world didn’t crumble at our feet, despite our fears that it might. In fact things didn’t just get cheaper; they got better.

It seemed like a drastic thing to do at the time. We weren’t on the edge of poverty. Our cable worked well enough, and so did the telephone. But it finally dawned on us that we were paying $130 or so for the cable TV and $40 for the phone but we really didn’t use them.

For a long time, we’ve watched most of our TV using streaming video from Netflix and Amazon Prime. What we did watch on regular cable was most often local and national news. But, by hooking up a tiny indoor TV antenna that sits out of sight behind the TV, we get our local stations and the national network news.

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You may not be as lucky when it comes to indoor antennas, but our home in Atlanta is close enough to the transmitting sites that it works flawlessly. In fact, since we have had zero service interruptions using an antenna ... and we did have a few with cable ... it could be argued that we get better service now that cable is gone.

When it comes to losing the home phone, that was also a no-brainer, especially in our case. The value of an old-fashioned wired phone is that it often continues to work when the power goes out. If that had been how our landline worked, we would have kept it. However, our landline came as part of AT&T’s Uverse service. So, unlike the home phones of old, our newfangled home phone died when the power went out. In fact, compared to our cellphones, it was less useful. After all, they do work when the power is out.

What had seemed like a giant and sort of frightening step has proved to be simple. I’m not here today to urge you to follow in my footsteps. A lot will depend on our viewing habits. But for those who are considering the notion, I’ll offer some advice.

Replacing the cable content

I’ve already mentioned that – for entertainment – we use streaming video. And we added more content by using an indoor antenna. But there are ways to go far beyond what we did if you are a bigger fan of cable TV than we were.

For one, there are online services such as Sling (I actually am a customer at the moment ... something I did to test it out before writing about it) that carry many of the same shows you watch on cable. For instance, and this is anything but a full list, you can get A&E, the History Channel, National Geographic ... well, rather than spend my afternoon typing let me send you to the website at www.sling.com so you can read the full list.

Prices start at $20 a month. You can pay more and get more channels. One thing we’ve done is pay extra to get a few Italian TV stations, direct from Italy. My wife is fluent in Italian and it helps her to stay in practice. I am not sure if we’ll stick with Sling. We’ll have to see how much time we spend with it, but it has a free trial that you can read about on the website, so it’s worthwhile to test the waters.

That’s one way to fill the gap. Another is this: If you are too far from TV transmitters to have my good luck using an indoor antenna, you can put up an old fashioned outdoor antenna. Or, if you wish, you can put an antenna in an attic where it is hidden from view. When it comes to antennas, outside is best, high is the way to go and big is great. So, even if you live further out than I do, you probably will be able to get good reception using an outdoor antenna.

And now the telephone

One disadvantage of using cellphones is that it’s inconvenient to carry one around when you are home. If that bothers you, then technology has an answer. There are gadgets that let you put your cell in a docking station at home. It connects to the sort of regular wireless home phones many people use. Since there are several things to know – none very complicated – let me steer you to this link talks about the process: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388689,00.asp.

A system like this lets you live as if you had regular phones around the house and yet do all that using your cell service.

Finally, there’s this advantage. As soon as we dropped our cable service, AT&T offered to reinstate our same plan for $60 a month less than we had been paying. So, even if things don’t work out, you may save a few bucks anyway. Just go back to cable and collect money when you pass Go.

Meanwhile, cutting the cord has been easy and even sort of fun. Besides, we save enough money each month to be able to go out and have a heck of a nice dinner to celebrate breaking the bonds that once tied us.

By the way, all bets are off when football season rolls around again. My new system works fine, but football is too important to take a chance.

Bill Husted writes about technology. Contact him at tecbud@bellsouth.net.