2006.01.30

One more step…

Posted in House and Home, This Site at 11:06 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much money I spend on telephone and internet service for myself. My combined internet and phone bill hovers at about $145 / month, and that’s not including any long distance. You’re probably shocked, but consider the following:

  • I have every possible feature on my home phone line. And yes, I do use all of them. You’d be surprised.
  • I have a business-grade DSL account, which gives me static IP addresses and the official blessing that yes, I am allowed to host servers if I want to.

So that’s where my $145 / month goes. I blame it all on the static IP addresses. My current provider is the cheapest place to get that sort of account, and it runs $75/month on its own.

Well, actually I’ve been doing more than thinking about it. Last week, I moved my domain (wittevrongel.ca) to a hosting provider. This week, (actually, starting tonight) I’ve got a much cheaper internet account, and it’s faster to boot. Hopefully next week, my home phone number will make the jump to the digital age and move to a VOIP provider. Yes, I’m keeping my current home phone number. Telemarketers, rejoice – you’ll still be able to harass me.

Here’s a cost rundown of the new setup, for the curious:

  1. Hosting for my domain: $6.45 USD / month. About $7.75 CAD / month, give or take.
  2. 7 Mbit internet + VOIP: $40 / month (yes, for both)
  3. Additional geeky phone features (like call forwarding): $6 / month

That’s it. Under $60 / month to get what amounts to more than I have now for $145 / month. And long distance is a lot cheaper, too.

There’s also another bonus: at the end of all of this, I will have ditched a certain telecom provider from my life entirely. They won’t be missed.

Though now I have another problem: I have a lot of hardware I’m not going to need any longer. Probably a good thing – less crap to move to the new place it’s finished being built. I still have to get rid of it, though. Several friends have expressed interest in some of the hardware (I don’t know why, exactly, but I work with a bunch of geeks, so I’m not terribly surprised). Let the purging begin!