I cut the cable a few years ago. I had been with AT&T cable. My cell service is through Verizon, so it wasn't part of my cable account. However, the price of cable had gotten so high that I sought alternatives. Did a lot of research and tried out SlingTV for a month to see how it worked. I was impressed, so I ditched AT&T, got Comcast solely for internet service, and went with SlingTV.
The thing about streaming is that you need to purchase internet service that is strong enough to handle the streaming in your household. It's only me and my sister living here, so I didn't need to worry about that many streams going at the same time. However, my sister works from home 3 days a week, so we needed to make sure that internet connections were very strong which is why I went with Comcast for internet service.
The other thing about streaming - you have to be careful with how many streaming companies you sign up for. It's easy for the fees to pile up to more than what cable costs, depending on what you want. For me, I wanted live TV as well as subscriptions for movies and TV shows. I had already been subscribed to Prime for a few years, so I didn't necessarily counting that as an additional fee from what I had been paying before. But since I cut the cord, I added Netflix ($12.99 per month), and then Britbox and AcornTV (combined another $11.99 per month). I also added a membership to my local PBS ($6 per month). The fees can add up, especially since my Comcast went up to $63 per month after the first year. I don't know if it will go up again this year.
After I tried out SlingTV, I wanted more channel options, so I tried out Hulu Live and DirecTV, both of which had horrible buffering issues. I then switched to PlaystationVue ($44.99), which I've had now for well over a year. It's been great. With this subscription, I have many channels including a lot of sports that I don't need unless it's Olympic season - and then there are lots of options for all the Olympic events that I want to watch. The channels that I miss the most are my local WGN, my local PBS (if I want to watch it live instead of streaming past episodes), and the Weather Channel. Other than that, I have all I need, especially since PSVue recently added one of my favorite channels, the Smithsonian Channel.
So, I'm at about $139 per month where I used to pay $185 per month. (I don't include Prime in that since I had it for a few years before mainly for the free shipping, although now I use it for the streaming video as well.) I won't be subscribing to PBS again, so that will drop about $6 per month.
Overall, I still feel as though I'm getting a good deal. The problem with streaming is that now EVERYONE is starting streaming channels - Disney, etc - so I have to be careful what I add and what I can do without. I think that overall, people may end up ultimately paying more for streaming than cable if they are interested in all that these separate streaming services offer.
One more thing - because I don't have a cable subscription, if I want to watch anything on demand from stations like the major networks, the Weather Channel, etc., I cannot do that anymore. If I try, they always indicate that it's free as long as I sign in with my cable subscription. Because I have no cable subscription, I can't sign in, and thus I can no longer watch on-demand shows from these networks.
With Hulu and Paramount+, and Peacock, my total bill will be about $110, compared with $165. I’m happy for now. I still have Apple TV+ for another week and I’ll turn it off an on to see different things. I may get HBOMax from time to time. And I already donate to PBS but need to up it a little to get their channel as well.
