The Family Experiment – part 3

 

We’ve passed the 1-month mark of not having home internet service. As mentioned in previous posts, our family decided to cancel our service through the cable company. The cost had risen to $80 a month, and we’d used up all the limited discount rates, as well as the special deals I had persuaded the company to give us by going in and personally talking to a rep. So this was the challenge: could we get by using the 3GB of fast data each of us had our prepaid phones, for which we each paid $25 a month?

https://alwaysreading1.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/the-family-experiment/

https://alwaysreading1.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/the-family-experiment-part-2/

We go to our local library about once a week to check out books and DVDs. When I am there or other places that offer free wifi, I try to take advantage of it. The biggest change for all three of us has been a sharp decrease in the number of times a day that we go online. We had gotten into the habit of browsing without thinking. But habits can be altered. I was made much more aware of how often I was accessing the web when I had to plug my phone into the USB cable to make a tethered hotspot connection to my computer. (You can also connect wirelessly by bluetooth, but it’s less secure).

So how did we do on limiting ourselves to 3GB of internet? Well, not so good. One of us reached the limit half-way through the month, one went over the limit just before the month was up just to test how much the speed would be throttled (it went down to the speed of dial-up), and one of us ended at 2.9 GB. In our defense, it was our first month of trying it, and we had times that we forgot to use the wifi signal instead of the cellular data.

The conclusion: It can be done, but it’s harder than you think.