How to Lower Your TV/Phone/Internet Bills

Many people spend a significant amount of their monthly outlay on communications and entertainment. That means paying for cable or satellite for TV, the phone, and an Internet connection. But those bills can be lower without doing without those services.

One basic choice for TV and/or Internet involves selecting between cable or satellite. Of course, there are more factors than cost involved. Some cable providers offer things that no satellite can, such as extremely high speed Internet.

But people are sometimes dazzled by numbers that will actually do them little good. As a result, they sometimes pay a higher price than necessary. For example, no satellite currently offers 10Mb download speeds for residential customers. But how often do you need to download a large file in a short time?

Even at the much slower 1.5Mb speed (1.5 megabits per second) available on Wildblue's satellite service you can download at roughly 10 megabytes per minute. That example demonstrates that you can get very good surfing and download speeds with either, so you don't have to sacrifice performance to cut costs.

Phone bills are another medium-priced bill that can be reduced. It's tougher because land-line phone companies still face no competition within a geographic region. But they are finally facing it from other sources, such as Internet and cellphone service providers. The key here is to ensure that you still get all the services you need solely from an Internet phone provider. Some don't offer 911, for example, so you still need either a cell phone or a land line.

Many consumers have abandoned their land line entirely, to go with straight cell phone service. With the improved connectivity seen over the past few years that is now a viable option.

Here, of course, the trick is to sit down and calculate what that cell phone will really cost if you make the switch. Depending on the specific plan - which vary widely in terms of basic total minutes offered, when they can be used, and more - you might spend much more if you're not careful. Eliminating, say, a $40 per month land line isn't a savings if you eat an extra $50 per month in added cell phone charges.

Lowering TV costs is one of the easiest places to look for savings these days. Many, if you just take what is offered without question, cost twice your monthly phone bill. Spending that much money is unnecessary now that there are options.

Satellite companies and local cable providers compete for your business. And depending on what you watch on TV, you can throw Netflix and local movie rental businesses and your Internet provider into the mix, too. That is, you can get films for only a few dollars per month on Netflix and news (and some TV shows) over your Internet connection.

All that competition works in your favor, if you make a small effort to examine your usage in detail. Interested in only 10 minutes of the local news? You can get that on your PC. Watch only movies on TV? Netflix is a lot less per month than any satellite or cable service charge.

Also, you can often get a better deal just by calling the company and asking. Some will lower your service fee in order to keep your business, if they think you're serious about switching.

At the same time, you can discuss accepting one of their bundled packages that combines TV/Phone/Internet in one monthly charge. The discount is usually healthy and if the service on all three is good the switch can be attractive.

The key is to look at all your actual communications and entertainment usage and not be dazzled by huge numbers of channels offered or short-term special deals. When you add up the numbers and compare against what you actually enjoy, you will quickly find ways to cancel what you don't use.