Cutting the Cord

Earlier this month, our household did what so many have done over the past few years: we jettisoned our land line. Now that we have more minutes on our cell phone plans, we hardly used the land line, not even bothering to answer it the few times it rang under the assumption it was a telemarketer. (An every-few-days check of the voicemail confirmed that that was often the case.)

For now, we're keeping the DSL that went with the land line; Verizon explained to me that we can still get Internet access even without the land line, referring to the process as a "dry loop," whatever that means. It's relatively slow (768 Kbps, as opposed to the 10-15 Mbps you see advertised nowadays), but I assume we'll upgrade at some point in the near future once we start adding devices (as of now, we have one desktop, so we'll likely add a wireless modem and laptop next).

I don't think we gave much thought to using this opportunity to upgrade our TV situation (i.e. no cable). The timing of that will be decided by either the US government (once they decide to auction off the last bits of public frequency such that there are no more network stations) or the entertainment industry (should the vast majority of programming we are interested, such as popular reality shows and big-time sporting events, migrate to cable stations only).

This is hopelessly boring to write and read, but I do so for my future self's edification. For, a mere five years from now, when there is an explosion of devices and of regular uses for massive bandwidth for education/entertainment/utility/safety purposes, the fact that we have one workstation and less than 1 Mbps of Internet speed will seem really archaic. (Judging from what I gather about my friends' home set-ups, I believe it already is!)