Well, that's it! I'm home again, and almost the first thing I've done as Commander-in-Chief at Melford Hall is to press the proverbial red button and take the nuclear option.
Phew! I'm quite breathless! But the world hasn't come to an end.
I'm talking about cancelling my home broadband contract, and having my landline disconnected. And relying completely on my 4G connection. Yes, I've gone wholly wireless. It's done. I think you'll agree that it's quite a step to take - very much against the grain, very much against current marketing. But I am not an idiot.
The upsides
# I presently pay £30.37 per month for my BT Fibre 1 unlimited-data home broadband. But the contract is close to its end, and BT are pushing a new contract at me. The least I'd pay after December would be £35.37 a month - for basically the same deal. I now won't have that expense. I can save most of that money instead. It's a useful extra to throw into my New Car Fund, a welcome boost to my Five Year Savings Plan.
# It has irked me that because I'm away from home on holiday so much - normally for a quarter of the year - I am not able to get full value from my home broadband. I've been wasting a quarter of the money thrown at it. That's silly. But now no more of it.
# I can ditch the Wi-Fi router and all that wiring around the house. Less clutter!
# If (as regularly happens around here) BT have to fiddle yet again with their green roadside cabinets and cause another local outage - necessary or accidental - then I will be immune from such inconvenience.
# I will henceforth join the Wireless-Only World, years in front of most householders. Mobile Internet in the form of 4G is normally fine where I live. And things will only improve as time goes on. One day, there will be 5G here. I think that's a long way off, but you never know. BT has just teamed up with Nokia to replace the Huawei bits in its network, and will now be pressing on with better 4G, and 5G in many more places, to gain a market advantage over its rivals. BT Mobile's network (developed by EE, which BT now own) is robust and its coverage wide. It's good in the sticks, as well as in cities.
The downsides
# I will have egg on my face if BT's 4G service ever goes down! But I can't recall a recent instance of that.
# There are, I agree, a few odd days in the year when weather conditions make 4G unusable at home for a few hours. But they are rare days. And if there is something I really must attend to, and I need a decent mobile internet connection, I can do what I sometimes have to do when on holiday - hop in the car and drive to a spot where I can get a usable signal. It's not a big deal.
# I will lose a £5 a month discount on my separate SIM-only BT Mobile contract for getting my home broadband from BT. The monthly cost will go up from £15 to £20. That's OK. I will still be saving a net £30 a month overall.
How I will get the Internet instead
# The phone is always directly connected via 4G.
# If I want a large-screen experience, or if there's something to do that definitely requires a laptop, then I simply connect phone and laptop with a USB cable - just as I do on holiday - and select the 'USB tethering' option in settings. The laptop then taps into the Internet normally, via the phone. The phone itself can be used independently while the laptop is linked like this - including different websites. The data speed seems just as fast as the basic Fibre 1 broadband I've used at home up to now. I can't of course get a really high speed on 4G, but then I don't subscribe to a film or TV streaming service, nor play online games, nor run a business.
# When tethered with a USB cable, the laptop charges the phone's battery up: handy.
# I used 10GB of mobile 4G data while I was away on holiday for four weeks, and that included much more photo uploading than I do at home. Still, to be on the safe side I have today doubled my BT Mobile data allowance from 20GB to 40GB a month, at no extra cost.
# The current SIM-only contract ends in late May. I'm then expecting to move onto a similar SIM-only contract at less monthly cost. That's the way the SIM-only market is moving. I certainly don't expect to pay more, and can of course - if BT have no deal on offer that I fancy - be a tart, slip out of BT's embrace, and say hello to a new provider. (Then, later, return to BT and shamelessly claim a free gift for being a 'new' customer. I've become so cheeky - but it's the way things are done)
# I will doubtless use my phone even more for looking things up quickly on the Internet, or recording my daily life in the various Word documents and Excel spreadsheets I have in Dropbox, up in the cloud. This poses no difficulties or challenges, except when making extensive changes to a particularly large and complicated spreadsheet, when a laptop's more spacious screen is obviously better. But next year, in the summer of 2021, I'll be buying a new phone. I can afford the best that Samsung will be selling, and it will certainly have a larger screen than my present phone (a Samsung Galaxy S8+ from 2017). That will narrow the gap between phone and laptop.
What doesn't change
# All my normal use of the Internet.
# I never used the email address BT gave me, so I won't miss it.
# Nor have I used the landline for voice calls since 2012. I won't miss that either. I'm not sentimental about the landline number: it can go.
# I can still upload a lot of photos to Flickr, and publish blog posts.
# As the laptop will normally be in Flight Mode all the time, it can't automatically download and install Windows updates. But I can check for those updates every three days and install them manually. This is what I do on holiday. (Similarly with various other laptop programs that periodically need an update)
# I watch very little TV, live or catch-up. But if the fit takes me, I can still switch the old Samsung TV on and see Freeview programmes using the ex-Sky satellite dish. It's not HD, but I don't mind. Or I can watch the odd live or catch-up TV programme on my laptop screen, tethering to the phone.
# I listen to a lot of talk radio and classical music on my portable Ruark DAB radio. That won't change.
I can't see any significant drawback to what I've done. I'm simply putting my access to the Internet on a permanent 'holiday footing'. I'll be saving money. And life will seem just a bit simpler.
Ah, that pleasant sense of having decluttered!
And yet it will be odd for a while, having no home broadband. I've had an Internet contract of one kind or the other since 2000, with Freeview, Wanadoo, Tiscali and then finally BT. Twenty years of Internet through a wire. But getting a modern smartphone in 2012 was a game-changer. It was inevitable that I'd give up on the old way of getting and sending data - through a wire, with all the fixed physical infrastructure that's needed, all of it vulnerable to storm and flood, and never as rock-solid as one might hope for. Nor is the wireless method entirely rock-solid either - but at least there are no roadside cabinets, no road works, and no fragile equipment to break, indoors or out. And the service is completely mobile, not fixed in one place.
Sequel - two days after the deed
All is going well. It's just like being in a good spot while on holiday. I connect phone and laptop with a cable, select the 'USB tethering' option in 'Connections' and I'm away. There is sometimes a longer delay (I'm talking about a second or two) to load up complex web pages, or a big heavily-formatted spreadsheet, but otherwise the experience is indistinguishable from using a Wi-Fi connection via one's home broadband. At least for the things I use the Internet for. And I'm not galloping through my data allowance, either.
The weather has been cool and very rainy. A 4G wireless signal can be attenuated quite severely by certain weather conditions, in any season. But so far, so good!
BT required 30 days' notice of termination of service, so my home broadband is in fact still usable until 30th October, and the landline won't be disconnected until that date either. After then, I'm completely reliant on 4G. Some people would say 'You need a backup method of getting online in your home, not just through your phone. And in any case, 4G isn't good enough for high-intensity use of the Internet.' But in my case there is no high-intensity usage, and a duplication of Internet access is something I don't want to pay for. It would be no more than an expensive insurance policy against infrequent 4G outages.
No, I think the wireless way is the way of the future. I've already consigned my Wi-Fi router to the attic, where it joins my already-redundant landline handset, and I've upped my monthly savings from December by £25. That'll be an extra £300 a year put by. Important money to me.
