Cutting The Cable Part 12

My Time Warner Cable TV bill is $250. In this series, I am cutting my cable TV bill. So far? I am down to $127 plus I saved $35 on my cell phone bill during his adventure. And I have more to go!

My cable bill includes an $8 rental charge for the internet modem. My internet modem used to support two telephone lines, so, I could never replace it. But now that I have dropped my two telephone lines? Good bye rented internet modem!

I checked the Time Warner site for compatible cable modem models (make sure you get a modem that your cable company supports!) and then did some price checking. I wanted to get the most capable yet least expensive cable modem I could find. I found the Arris Surfboard SB6121 for $65 at Walmart.

Just a warning about selecting cable modems. You might be tempted to pay a little more for a better modem. Perhaps the next modem says it is faster or does more. Don't be fooled! Just because the cable modem says it can do 200 Mbps, it will only do whatever you are paying the cable company for. In my case, I'm paying for 15 Mbps internet. I could buy something that supports 700 Mbps, and I would still only get 15 Mbps.  Don't pay extra for something you don't need! And that goes for the support plans. If Walmart (or whomever you buy it from) offers you a support plan? Turn it down. Those things tend to be 12% of the original price, yearly re-occurring, and often have a 2-year buy-in that costs around 25% of the purchase price (robbing you of the Future Value (FV) of the money you are going to spend). Keep it simple: Buy the cheapest modem that your cable company supports, and will run your internet speed.

Before making any changes to your internet, you should bench mark your internet performance. Go to http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and run a couple of tests. Write down the results.

I unboxed the surfboard and plugged it in - pulling the cables out of the old modem and plugging them into the new one. The surfboard blinked and blinked and spent several minutes rebooting. Many devices need to download new versions of their software when they are first plugged in, so, that's fine.

When the cable box settled down, I called Time Warner to register the new cable modem. In some instances, you can go to a website to register your cable modem, but in my case, that option isn't available if your old cable modem use to support telephones.

The Time Warner operator needed my cable modem model number and the MAC address printed on the bottom of the cable modem. Ten minutes later? The cable modem was registered and I was surfing the internet again!

It was time to repeat the speed tests to make sure they were approximately the same as my benchmark. I did a speed test at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and was satisfied with the results. When doing these speed tests, you rarely get the same result twice. You aren't checking to see if you get the exact same rate as the bench mark. You want to make sure you get something close to the bench mark - something in the neighborhood.

I'll return the old cable modem on Monday and get $8 per month off my bill. My break-even point for purchasing the cable modem is around 8 months, afterward, I start saving money (that is why you don't want an expensive cable modem because the break even point will be farther out).

My cable modem install was very easy and pain free. If you are still renting a cable modem from the cable company, you should consider replacing it.