Cutting-The-Cord, Bandwidth Usage and Data Caps in Practice
Posted: February 24, 2012 at 2:40 pm by Seppo
The Setup
Our family has cut-the-cord, that is we do not have cable TV or even over-the-air ‘rabbit-ear’ TV at all, rather than we watch all our TV over the internet. We have hooked up an old PC to a 32 inch LCD TV in the living room, and control the PC using a wireless keyboard. The PC is wired directly to the router (not using WiFi). As a whole the ease-of-use is pretty close to regular TV setup.
For online TV content we use Netflix ($8/month, using ‘better quality resolution’ with circa 0.7GB/h) and Streaming Guide. The former is really for our kids to watch cartoons, and the latter has more than enough free content (over 1200 free shows currently) for adults. We watch TV probably 1-2 hours every day, double that on weekends. We do not watch TV at high-definition (HD) quality at all. The non-HD picture quality is certainly good enough for our needs. We do not download video at all (e.g. BitTorrent etc). Besides online TV, our family uses internet heavily (browsing, email, work) 8-16 hours a day / 7 days a week / 365 days a year.
Our internet plan is currently Rogers Express with 60GB of monthly data usage, and with 12 Mb/s download and 512 kb/s upload speeds. The price for this plan before taxes and modem rental ($3) is $46 per month.
Observations
- Whenever I have tested the network speed, I get what I pay for, both upstream and downstream directions. No slowdowns from Rogers’ part.
- We have never gone over the 60GB monthly data usage limit, so we have not paid any (very steep) overage charges. UPDATE: Last month when grandmother was visiting for a week, watching Soap 24/7
we finally managed to go over the quota by 2GB, resulting to a $4 penalty. - The network speed (i.e. bandwidth) is enough to deliver the streaming content without any problem. We can in fact watch Netflix and online TV simultaneously without any problems.
- I miss The Walking Dead Season 2, and need to wait for it to come to Netflix sometime later in 2012.
- I miss all full Formula One Grand Prix altogether (TSN has a short summary and final lap but that’s all)
- We save $50+ a month compared to subscribing to some cable TV package
Summary
It is well-known that the state of public internet services in Canada compared to the rest of the developed world is poor. We pay more and get less than our friends south-of-the-border or across the Atlantic.
In practice Canadian internet services are good enough for casual mainstream TV watching, and even relatively heavy internet usage, and as such should not prevent Canadians from shifting to online based TV and dropping their (expensive) cable TV subscriptions.
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