One of the most unthought-of and yet complained about expenses of the modern day is how expensive cable, internet, and phone services have become. The former two being especially guilty of this. It’s not unheard of to pay as much as $200-$300 (or more) for everything combined. Do you want to find out how to decrease your bill by up to 85%? Well, you better get ready and buckle up! Because this is as exciting as it’s going to get!!

It’s very easy to get hooked on to one of those flashy, new “sign-up” promotions where you’re offered the world for an extremely attractive price. Maybe it was better than what you were currently getting from another provider. But when that deal’s time limit expires, the attractive price morphs into an ugly, money-eating monster. And if you’re not the type to regularly review your monthly bills or credit card statements, you likely won’t notice this big change.

Even if you are one to notice, there’s a good chance you won’t act immediately, putting it off until closer to the next bill cycle or longer. One reason for this procrastination may be because the price increase isn’t so large as to be considered a financial emergency, and yet small enough that you don’t feel too much financial pressure if you stall for a bit. Also, not many people really enjoy talking on the phone with a telecom company’s sales division for an hour trying to negotiate a better deal. I know I don’t!

If you do decide to hold off on dealing with the price increase for a month, that can easily become two. And then three. Before you know it, 6 months have gone by and you’ve now become accustomed to that money-eating monster hanging around with you. The result is a situation where you’re essentially tossing money down the toilet for no good reason. And it adds up quickly!

Plans

Below are some examples of current pricing for the tri-pack of services at some of the most popular and largest telecoms in Canada, specifically Bell, Rogers, and Cogeco.

  • Bell’s bundles range from $130 to $250/mos + tax
  • Roger’s bundles range from $130 to $215/mos + tax.
  • Cogeco’s bundles range from $135 to $196/mos + tax

All of these plans exclude any “special” add-ons like sports or “super-premium” channels like Starz and HBO. You can see that someone could easily reach $300/mos with a few extras thrown in here and there.

For comparison, my current total bill for combined cable, internet, and phone is sitting at just around $105/month, tax included. While it may not sound like a lot of savings, it adds up to several thousand per year. Not too bad!

This is how I did it and how you can still go quite a bit lower.

Part 1: The Cable Conundrum

The best and fastest way to lower your cable bill is to just “Cut the Cord”, leaving you with more time and money in your pocket. But this can be quite difficult to achieve in real practice. I’ve managed to cut the cord in the past, although it’s been recently sewn back on again for various reasons. Nonetheless, that won’t stop us from discussing ways to conquer this price tag!

Most of us just want to watch a couple of specific channels that we really like. But one of the major problems with cable tv is that you can’t just “subscribe” to those channels. You have to buy a package that includes a bunch of extra filler that no one cares about. To make matters worse, many telecom companies don’t have the “popular channels” in their basic packages, thus you end up paying extra for them as well as for a bunch of crap you don’t want.

I’m going to say it right now. Basic cable is the most worthless piece of dog poo poo ever created (except for the weather network channel!!). Even the fancier packages with 150+ channels are completely ridiculous because half of them are regional news channels from the same network, half of them are French, and half of them are silly Sting Ray audio channels. Yes, that’s 3 halves!

We used to have basic cable with Cogeco in the past. Then at one point, we upgraded to the next step up which had many of the good channels like Much Music, HGTV, History, etc. But along with the increase in quality came a drastic increase in price. At the time, Netflix was becoming popular so we gave it a try. What’s an extra $10, right? Eventually, we were mainly watching Netflix because of the vast quality increase over cable, so we ended up canceling our cable service.

Later on, when our second child was born, my wife really wanted something that she could just “flip” through easily that already had live programs playing (ala cable). I can’t really blame her. If you’ve ever stayed at home during the early stages of post-birth, you can probably identify with wanting everything to be as easy as possible during that time. Also, the Oscars were coming up, and… She really likes the Oscars, at least back when they had proper hosts!

Since we had spent some time “away” from Cogeco, we now qualified again for the “new subscribers” deals. There so happened to be one of those available called My 10 for $42. This plan included the basic cable channels as well as 10 additional channels that we could specifically pick and choose. We could also change them up every month in case we didn’t like them and DVR was included too! Overall it seemed half decent for a good price.

We had this package for a year, at which point it reverted to its original money-eating, non-discount form of $73 per month.

A couple of times we would call up the customer retention service and ask for a 10-15% discount. But that would only last for 3-6 months before we’d have to repeat the process. As an important side note, paying less for sh*t doesn’t make it any less sh*t!

Re-evaluating those past 12 months, we didn’t really watch much except for the CBC/CTV News and maybe some shows on Bravo. All the other channels had ridiculous programming setups like Big Bang Marathon repeats of repeats for 12 hours straight, day after day, after day. After much procrastination and $73 monthly cash fires, I took a serious look into any and all viable alternatives.

A Quick Side Bar on the Frustrations of Cable

During the last few years, there have been some interesting developments with the whole cable industry. In a nutshell, cable subscription prices kept rising and providing less value to consumers. Meanwhile, Netflix set the bar for streaming services proving that they could be an economical and viable alternative to cable, all while offering interesting, original, and plentiful content.

Just the fact that you could watch an entire season of a show at your leisure is something that cable babies in the 90’s never would have dreamt of. Netflix inspired many customers to “cut the cord”. However, other companies took notice of Netflix’s success and began jumping ship from mainstream cable networks to launch their own streaming services. Thus we now have things like Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Crave TV, HBO, etc, all trying to attract subscribers through their “original” content offerings.

The Cable industry had been fractured. Many of these alternatives were dirt cheap too; $10 – $15/mos. The irony of it all is that because of how saturated the streaming market has become, and the fact that individual companies like Disney and HBO have restricted their owned content to their own services, you end up having to subscribe to multiple services to get a lot of what Cable initially offered. This causes the “price of admission” to be near that of the original cable subscription, which we were all trying to get away from in the first place. From a cost perspective as a whole, we’re not much better off.

Another option that came along with the original streaming content providers was actual direct cable alternative options. These allowed you to stream regular “live tv” cable programming using your internet, as opposed to requiring the typical cable box setup; services like Youtube Tv, Philo, Sling TV.

Back to the Anecdote

So, ultimately we were looking for a true cable replacement, like the options mentioned above. One of the problems was that even though these alternatives mostly had all of the “popular” cable channels (ie: AMC, Slice, HGTV, etc.), many of the live tv services were still quite expensive for an “alternative” service; easily $55 and up. There were a few notable exceptions like Philo TV and Sling TV with offerings at $20 and $30/month respectively. But they seemed too good to be true.

And they were because then we ran into another problem. Not only were those in US prices, but they also were geo-restricted, meaning you could only watch them if you were located in the US. It seemed like this was becoming an impossible task.

Enter the VPN

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is an application that allows you to access geo-restricted content. It allows you to change your I.P. address to a different one, even to the point that it looks like you’re in a different country… So, using a VPN to change your I.P. address to one based in the US for instance, lets you access those geo-restricted streaming services. If any of you remember back when the US Netflix had much better content than the Canadian one, then you’ll understand the value of a VPN. The one we use is called NordVPN and runs about $3-$4/mos.

Finally, we were able to get everything working. At the time we settled on Sling Tv for $30 US / mos ($40 CAN). It came with free PVR, no rental equipment, and no cancellation fees. The only caveat was that it has to be used on a Laptop/Desktop connected to your TV. Rokus and FireSticks don’t seem to work well with it.

It’s been a good experience so far.

UPDATE: another option that seems half descent is through the cable company re-sellers of major telecom services. I mention some of these further down in the internet section. The internet company I’m with is Carry Telecom (Cogeco reseller) and they also offer a really cheap cable alternative. It’s $20/month and seems to be in between what basic cable offer but also includes a number of options of the next cable package step up. One of the perks with it too is it has all the local news Canadian news stations as well, if you’re into that stuff.

Part 2: The Phone Solution

Back when we had phone service through Cogeco, the cost for a basic landline was ~$32/month (no long-distance included). Since the rise of cell phones, landlines have become generally obsolete. Voice-over-Internet-Protocols (VoIPs) like Skype and Zoom haven’t helped things either for the poor landline.

Still, there’s something habitually comforting about having a landline as a backup. They’re also more comfortably designed for longer use. So with that in mind, the most economical and feature-rich alternative to the classic landline that I’ve found has been the Magic Jack. It costs us $53… A year! This little gizmo is a VoIP technology that uses your internet to make and receive calls. The interesting thing about it, compared to another VoIP service like Skype or Zoom, is that the Magic Jack can be plugged right into your phone line, thereby letting you use any “landline” style phones you already own through the Magic Jack service.

It’s literally “plug and play” and has been working great for the several years we’ve been using it. It has all the fancy features that you can think of; caller ID, call waiting, answering service, call blocking, etc. Almost nothing provides me with such pleasure as that of having a random telemarketer call during dinner time, at which point I note down their number, then add it to the Magic Jack’s block list! Ah, it’s a great feeling!

The current Cogeco phone packages available as of this moment range from $15 to $20/month for 24 months, then increase to $35 to $58 /month after the promotional period ends. And they barely have any long distance or more than 2 calling features.

A one year of a Magic Jack Subscription costs pretty much the same as one month from a big telecom! That’s crazy cheap!

The only real downside to using a VOIP like Magic Jack is that when the power goes out, so does your phone. Although, most everyone has cell phones these days so this is basically a moot point. The other semi-important thing to note with VoIPs is the way 911/Emergency Services work in regards to address identification. It’s not an automatic feature like a landline has, but it’s also not completely absent either.

Part 3: Internet Freedom

The big telecoms have this funny way of dealing with customers who’ve been with them for a long time. Whatever package you’re currently on, telecoms will continue to let you roll with it for years, even if it doesn’t exist anymore. EVEN if they have a much better, improved package available. They’ll let you sit on it forever, leaking money for a crappy service you didn’t even realize was crappy to begin with. But trust me, it is!

It wasn’t too long ago where the majority of the packages had data/download caps, whereby if you watched too much Netflix, or downloaded too many movies, you’d go over your cap and be price gouged for every gigabyte you were over. Of course, one of the terrible solutions offered was to upgrade to a pricier plan with a higher data cap. Bell, for example, has their cheapest internet package at $50/month. It comes with quite slow download speeds and a data cap of 100GB/mos, which is NOT a lot let me tell ya. Some current-gen video games are almost 100 Gigabytes alone! Bell’s next step up provides much faster speeds and unlimited data, but it’s also priced much higher at $85/month.

With the rise of 4K streaming, there is so much more data bandwidth that’s used these days. Fortunately, most of the telecoms now offer unlimited bandwidth for the vast majority of their internet plans. The price variations now are mainly differentiated by the different download speeds.

A couple of years ago, we had one plan that had a download limit of 175 gigabytes and paid about $75/month for the pleasure. Trying to look for alternatives was pretty limiting because anything from Bell or Rogers was notably more expensive. The next step down for costs were companies like Primus or Comwave. The challenge with those ones was that they had limited geographical availability as well as not being much cheaper than the Big 3. After some more googling, I discovered this hidden wealth of telecom companies that most of you have likely never heard of, offering crazy cheap internet! “Cheap” as in, too good to believe cheap.


These companies were really sketchy sounding too, like Distrubtel, Vmedia, CarryTel, Start.ca, Execulink, to name a few. But I figured what the heck! The worst that could happen is that I’d lose a month’s worth of fees… or my identity and credit card info…

Ideally, I was hoping to find a significantly cheaper plan that had unlimited data and faster speeds than what we had with Cogeco.

The cheapest unlimited plans were between $25 – $35/mos for 30 – 75 Mbps speeds. Of course, a lot of this depends on where you live. Better plans were usually more available in larger metropolitan areas.

We settled on a CarryTel plan that cost $30/mos* for 40 Mbps. By far not the fastest out there, but more than enough for multiple high definition streams. It was half the price of what we were paying with Cogeco, and had NO data caps! They also had no cancellation or rental fees.

The reason why these companies are able to offer such low prices is that they are internet resellers. They buy bulk, wholesale internet service from places like Rogers or Bell, then resell it at cheaper rates to customers, all the while being able to use Rogers’ and Bell’s internet lines. Heck, when the installer came to hook up the CarryTel modem, he was actually a Cogeco tech that CarryTel had contracted out! When I told him it wasn’t for Cogeco, the look of dismay on his face and the sigh he gave was quite telling.

Low Income Options:

For the last several years, the government of Canada has offered an initiative called “Connecting Families“, where they have partnered with ISP’s to provide affordable home internet service to low-income families for only $10/month. It’s available until March 2022 at this moment. To qualify you have to be in receipt of the maximum child benefit; so you’ll need a kid(s), and have a family income of around 30k or less. The service is on the slow side but definitely the cheapest available unless you’re that guy parked outside the library leeching their free wifi!

UPDATE: The Canadian government is expanding the Connecting Families initiative for 2022, by further offering another economical option for low income families. This additional plan will provide 50 Mbps download, 10 Mbps upload, and have a max data bandwidth of 200GB per month. Keep an eye out for its appearance.

The Last Thing

The last thing we have is a standard Netflix subscription for $10/month. We don’t currently have any interest in the other streaming services like Disney and Crave TV. Although an Amazon Prime membership may be in the works later this year when the new Lord of the Rings show and The Wheel of Time show are released (aka the Game of Thrones killer!).

If you don’t know what The Wheel of Time is, go look it up right now!!! No, seriously. Look it up. Then read it!

Our Current Break Down:

So the services we currently use are CarryTel ($45/mos) + Magic Jack ($4.45/mos) + SlingTV ($40/mos) + NordVPN (~$4/mos) + Netflix ($10/mos), for a grand total including tax of just over $100. That’s almost the price of Bell’s cheapest unlimited internet package alone! We could probably live without SlingTv now that Netflix is half-decent, and we might do that in the future. Without Sling, our total would come down to a mere ~$50/month.

Other strange ways

The end is not now. There are a few more items to discuss including a few of the shady variety. The first being those “TV sites” that let you stream all the popular shows for free. I’m not going to list them nor discuss their illegalities, but they do exist. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Lots of times there are pop-up ads and potential for malware. So beware. The same goes for torrents. If you don’t know what torrents are, it’s probably better it stays that way. As for Kodi Boxes, those are also beyond the scope of this article.

More legal and morally appropriate options include the old-school roof antenna! There are indoor versions as well, but the best reception awards go to the exterior antennas like this RCA one. While they may be unsightly, you can receive free HD over-the-air programming. One big issue with them is location, as the farther away you are from broadcast towers, the less amount and lower quality of channels you’ll get. You’re all set if you live in a big city, but have less luck if you’re in more of a rural area.

There are also individual channel sites that host their own on-demand and pre-recorded content. Sites like the Food Network, Global News, HGTV, etc. A downside is that they might only have partial clips of some shows or only a limited amount of episodes available. Netspectrum.ca has a list of legally available channels for streaming. Who doesn’t love the Shopping Network!! Best comedy show around!

And then there’s Locast…

UPDATE: Unfortunately Locast was forced to shut down its operations permanently in September 2021. This was the outcome of a legal battle between it and several major US broadcasters that sued Locast for copyright infringement. Even though Locast was designed around donation style support for its services (meaning it was technically free), the court ruled that those funds were also used for expansion of its services into new markets, not just for regular maintenance, which violates the law around “Free To Air” tv channels.

Fortunately, there are other options available in a similar vein to Locast you can find doing some googling. Just make sure you use VPN.

Locast’s website states, “Locast is a not-for-profit service offering users access to broadcast television stations over the internet. We stream the signal over the Internet to select US cities”.

So, think of Locast like a typical antenna, but instead of broadcasting over-the-air, the channels are broadcast over the internet. The big advantage with this service is that there’s no “fuzzy” antenna reception and it doesn’t matter how far you are away from the station towers. As long as you have working internet and a computer, you get crystal clear channels! There are quite a lot of them available too, literally dozens.

Locast does come with a couple of caveats. Because it’s a free service, they rely on donations to stay afloat. If you choose not to donate, every 15 minutes you’ll be interrupted by a 30-second ad asking for a donation. These ads will disappear with a minimum monthly donation of $5.

Another caveat you may have noticed on Locast’s website is the “US cities” descriptor. Canadians by default do not have access to Locast because it’s based in the US. This can be circumvented using a couple of items. First, you need to use a VPN to change your IP address to a US one (as mentioned previously). Second, you’ll also need to change your global coordinates (Latitude/Longitude) to match one of the US cities on Locast’s list. Luckily there’s a cool little google chrome extension that does exactly that. “Change Geolocation (Location Guard)” allows you to change your actual latitude and longitude to wherever you’d like.


Growing up as a kid, all we had was an antenna, and let me tell you, Locast’s service is about 1000% better than what we had. Give it a try!

Cheapest Low Income Option

A qualifying low-income family could obtain all three services for extremely cheap, as low as ~$20 a month. (Gov’t Internet [$10], Magic Jack [~$5], VPN [~$4], and Locast [Free])

What about sports?????

I haven’t mentioned sports thus far because they’re not really my thing. However, I am aware that there are a large number of sports fans out there. SlingTV does have a sports add-on for about $15/mos CAD. Channels include MLB, NBA, NHL, Golf, etc, if you’re into that. Roof antennas and Locast only have whatever is being aired locally at that time.

All you really need

In reality, internet access is the only essential service that anyone really needs. Cable TV is just for entertainment, and landline/VoIP services are a duplication of what most people already use their cell phones for. If your monthly bill with one of the big companies is currently around $250 to $300 /mos, then you’re paying $3000 – $3600 / year. You can easily drop this down to a fraction of the cost, paying ~$45/mos or only $540/year. That would save you $45,000 over 10 years* (Invested with a modest 7% annual return). Even if you’re at the lower end of a traditional package, let’s say $150/mos, switching down to $45/mos for your services would still save you almost $19,000 over 10 years (invested at 7%).

Something to Think about

If one of your goals is to reach early retirement and financial independence, then to achieve that goal you have to save enough to support your spending indefinitely. The typical rule for this is to save 25x your annual expenses (aka the 4% rule). So any individual expense that you want to be self-sustaining also requires saving 25x that yearly amount. Therefore a $45/month expense would require total savings of $13,500 to fund it in perpetuity. By comparison, a $300/month expense would require you to save $90,000. Divide your hourly wage by these amounts to see how many extra hours of work (and years) it would take you to save the difference. Is it really worth it? Something to think about.




*We’ve been with CarryTel for several years, and initially started on their $30/month plan. This has increased a bit and is now $40+tax. Unfortunately, the prices of all the smaller ISPs have been raised because of an overturned 2019 CRTC decision to cut wholesale internet rates to smaller service providers. You also read more about this topic of fee increases here and here.