bombs in bottles
Project "Yeet Broadband?" is what is says on the tin: I am testing some things out to see if I can cancel my home broadband connection.
I'm guessing it is more likely than not you now think I am nuts. I also think I may be nuts! Hence the question mark in "yeet broadband?" I won't know until I try, and I don't want to try without making any excessively inconvenient changes.
Here's what I'm trying and why.
A few major observations have led me to this point.
One: I am not rich and am likely to get increasingly not-richer in the coming years. We are, after all, less than 20 days from discovering whether the US economy is in fact In a Recession. (I am about two years into screaming "tech is absolutely in a recession and the rest of you absolutely will follow.")
Two: I don't use my home broadband very much. In fact, I sometimes forget to turn it on for days at a time. (My modem and router are on a power strip; I turn it off when I'm not using them, because electrons are expensive under capitalism.)
Three: When I do use my home broadband, it's for resource-light stuff (writing) or for resource-heavy stuff (streaming) I could get from other sources. I don't *have* to stream [random movie I just remembered exists]; I could borrow it from the library.
Four: The vast majority of my Internetting is done away from home.
Five: Over the last four or five months, my phone connection has been more reliable than my home broadband connection. I've lost the broadband several times; I lost the phone data only once, for about four hours after a tornado. (I also lost the broadband at this time, only it took three days to come back. Calls and texts still worked.)
I have four goals for this project.
My plan: do all my internet connecting via my phone and track data usage. Upgrade my data plan as needed until I've hit a reasonable minimum for both my phone and hotspot use.
Currently, I have Mint Mobile's 5GB data plan. Mint was a natural choice because I run Sailfish OS on a Sony Xperia 10iii; Sailfish plays nicest with T-Mobile in the US, and I like saving money.
Mint will let me pay up to $40 a month for unlimited data plus 20GB hotspot use. I'm hoping not to need this plan, but we'll see where we get.
Right now, I'm tenatively planning to hang onto broadband until August, when the new school year begins. I figure this will give me plenty of time to understand where my data use goes and calibrate my actual needs/costs.
So many questions! Hence my willingness to toy with this over the next few months.
How much data am I actually using? (A quick search estimates the average household uses 100GB of broadband a month. I'm sure mine isn't that high, but will 10GB do? 20GB?)
What would make my data use more efficient? (I opened smol.pub to type this and realized a few paragraphs in that I could have saved myself some connection by typing it first and then connecting to post it.)
Where am I going to get music and video that I currently stream on a whim? (Am I going to order DVDs via the library? Keep a list in my phone and rip stuff from YouTube when I'm out and about? Borrow a friend's wifi for an afternoon to torrent old movies from the Internet Archive?)
What if it's just not feasible to be without home broadband? (Well, then I'll know it's worth the firstborn they charge me each month, at least.)
The numbers really sold me on this project.
Currently, home broadband and phone data together cost me $1,140 per year. If I drop the broadband and switch to Mint's "Unlimited" plan (10GB hotspot), I save $780 per year, or $65 per month.
$780 is about what I net for my library job every two weeks. Dropping the broadband basically means I get paid for an extra two weeks each year, for free.
$65 per month is also the exact cost of my gym membership. My gym also has a cafe with free wi-fi for members. (They do not care if you do not order food at the cafe.) And it's within easy biking distance of my house.
If 10GB per month isn't enough and I need Mint's "Unnecessary" plan, I'll save $660 per year - about two months short of a gym membership, but still a significant chunk of change.
Meanwhile, my current broadband costs $80 per month, and my carrier has made it clear I won't be getting service for less. Switching to the only other available carrier would get me an "introductory price" of $60 per month for a year, but then I'd be right back to $80. And I'd still need to shell out at least $15 per month for my phone.
So: I can pay a total of $40 per month for all my telecoms or $75 to $95 per month for them. That's not challenging math, really.
Honestly, it is. And honestly, that's what appeals to me.
Ever since I started moving away from Big Tech offerings, I've enjoyed the inconvenience. It's like how I also prefer driving a manual transmission over an automatic. A stick and clutch make me feel like I'm the one driving the car; an automatic makes me feel like I'm just there to hold the wheel.
Similarly, the "inconvenience" of having to order CDs or DVDs from inter-library loan, or bike to the cafe if I need a big chunk of wi-fi at the end of the month, feels more like I'm running my own life. I'm making more deliberate choices. I'm not running on impulse driven by algorithms.
At worst, I'll spend a few extra dollars to discover my broadband is indispensable, at which point I will gripe less about its cost. And I'll feel slightly more in control of my own life. Those aren't bad worst-case scenarios for a "nuts" project.
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