#11 - First Comcast Bill Since Dropping TV and Voice Shows a Credit Balance

Yesterday we received our January Comcast bill. It shows that Comcast owes us $5.09 because the December bill of $210.39 included prepayment for about ten days of Comcast TV and Comcast Voice that we subsequently canceled.

I think our February Comcast bill will be for $69.95. I don't know if there will be any added taxes or fees.

Overall things are going OK. No regrets.

Our internet data usage (measured per calendar month) is 229 GB as of January 20, so we seem to be on track to stay within our 1 TB per month allowance.

Another positive note: So far we haven't had any trouble fast-forwarding through commercials on shows that we record with the YouTubeTV DVR.

Also, we haven't noticed any difference in performance since dropping from 150 MBPS internet service to 60 MBPS. The Comcast SpeedTest tool shows an objective difference, we can't feel it in our daily use.

#10 - How to Watch PBS

PBS is one of our favorite networks.

You may recall from post #2 that YouTube TV provides live viewing of most local channels, but it does not include PBS stations. We think this is because PBS does not have the right to enable streaming all of their shows.

For people who live relatively close to an over-the-air broadcast antenna, the best solution probably is to buy an HD TV antenna and use it to watch your local PBS station. But that's not an option for us because we live too far from the Detroit and Toledo antennas. We'd need to have a 60-foot antenna tower, which our subdivision does not allow, and we wouldn't want anyway.

We have, however, for many years been contributors to our local PBS stations, and this allows us to stream some PBS shows via PBS.org and PBS Passport.

Last night we tested this, watching this week's new episode of Nova on PBS Passport. We streamed the show from my phone using our Chromecast. It worked pretty well, but we subsequently discovered that streaming PBS works better using an Amazon FireTV Stick or a Roku box (both of which we already own).

The next big test will be whether we can stream the new Season 3 of Victoria, which begins tomorrow night. It's already possible to stream Season 1 and Season 2 via PBS Passport, so we hope this continues with Season 3.

#9 - We Have Lift-Off

Yesterday we received our new third party wifi router, so today I called Comcast to cancel our TV and Voice services, and to cancel the rental of all the Comcast equipment in our house.

At the same time I asked Comcast to drop our internet subscription from the 150 mbps "Blast" level to the 60 mbps "Performance" level. (Both are rated at 5 mbps upstream.) I figure we might as well try the slower, cheaper downstream service to see if it satisfies our needs. (I think it will.) We can upgrade the internet service later if we need to.

The change in services went into effect immediately, and we were temporarily without any internet service until Comcast activated our new cable modem. This took less than an hour, and Comcast phone support was very helpful. The internet connection was up and running in time for us to watch the Michigan basketball game tonight live on YouTube TV.

Tomorrow I need to return all of the Comcast boxes to the local Comcast storefront.

So far so good.

Two big questions to be resolved:

• Will we be happy with the 60 mbps service?
• Will we be able to stay within our 1 TB monthly data cap?

And lots of little things to tweak as we figure things out.

I think our new monthly bills will add up to about $145 compared to the the $210 bill that Comcast sent us in December. We also invested $437 in new hardware that is I think superior* to the Comcast hardware, so we should break even in 6 or 7 months and see steady savings after that point. And we are not relying on any promotional pricing that will expire in 12 months.

* I went with a 3-node mesh network using Google Wifi.

#8 - Telephone Number Porting is Complete and Newly Purchased Cable Modem has Arrived

Our permanent home phone number (since 1979) has now been ported from Comcast Voice to Ooma. The caller ID for outgoing calls didn't work properly at first, but this was quickly resolved via a chat session with Ooma tech support.

Also, our new third-party cable modem arrived today. A new wifi router is due to arrive tomorrow. My goal is to remove all Comcast hardware from our house so we are not paying any rental fees. I bought the cable modem and router separately so it will be  easy (at least hypothetically) to switch to a different internet service provider should we decide to break completely with Comcast.

#7 - Some Comic Relief from the Philadelphia Enquirer

Comcast decides that the best way to respond to cord cutting is to squeeze more money from their customers who continue to buy their TV services: (Click Here to Read Newspaper Article)