For the first time in my working life I am sitting at a desk that doesn’t have a hardwired telephone sitting on it. The wall mounted Princess phone no longer hangs in the kitchen and the drawer In my bedside table no longer has a phone in it.

Pulled the plug, along with CATV.

It only makes sense but it’s a little weird.

We kept the cable, but ditched the landline a few years ago. It did feel a little strange!

We ditched the landline but transferred the old home number to a cell phone. Mr wtg uses it as his cell. Xfinity had just launched their mobile phone program and the monthly fee was ridiculously low; you just paid the taxes (like $3 a month). They've gotten rid of that plan, so now we have a plan that gives us 1 GB of data with unlimited talk/text for $15 a month.

We still have cable TV.

Steve, what if anything are you doing for TV service?

Netflix and Amazon Prime, YouTube.

Looking in to a streaming service called “Direct TV now” that my son says gets him the local channels, lots of cable channels and sports for some $30/mo.

I think DirectTVNow may have changed its name to AT&T TV Now. The cheapest plan they have here is $55. They carry some local stations, but not any of the four PBS stations we watch pretty often.

Comcast (our provider) internet/bundles are actually pretty competitive when you compare to the cost of streaming services from someone else and internet service from Comcast. They get you on the internet cost if you aren't doing a bundle of some sort. Plus you have to watch data usage if you're streaming all of your TV watching rather than getting some of it from your cable.

I also love the (currently) free Xfinity Stream app that lets me watch everything on my iPad, whether it's live or on demand stuff. I'm sure they'll start to charge for the service eventually but it's been free for several years now.

But please keep us posted on your journey. I'm always on the lookout for a better mousetrap...

Looks like it's ATT now here as well, and it is indeed $55.

YouTube TV is $50/mo and includes a few more channels. Says it includes PBS kids, but does not say it includes PBS. Includes unlimited DVR/cloud storage.

I may stick an antenna on the roof and see what happens. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Around here it's a pretty good bet. I think we get 60+ stations.

We have a TV in the basement that Mr wtg watches sometimes when he goes down there to do laundry on Saturdays. We just have one of those amplified flat antennas hanging off of the tool rack and we get a ton of stations.

I've thought about putting a decent antenna back up on the roof.

A while back, I think markj signed up for Sling and got a free HD antenna. They're still running that promo. You pay for two months in advance and the antenna is free.

He's in another area, but maybe he'll see this and chime in.

https://www.sling.com/supported-devices/antenna

There are a couple of sites that help you figure out how to position the antenna, and to determine how many stations you can reasonably expect to watch.

Articles about RabbitEars and TVFool.

https://longrangesignal.com/ho...-the-best-reception/

https://longrangesignal.com/ho...tation-list-accurate

There's another one that's been around for years. I like this one because it tells you which stations are in your area, and what kind of antenna you need to receive the signal. Turns out there are like 90 stations in my area, but you need a rooftop antenna with a pre-amp to get them. Still, we're getting two-thirds of them with an indoor flat antenna. In a basement.

https://antennaweb.org/

Antennaweb also has a page on cord cutting resources:

https://antennaweb.org/cord-cutting