Buy Your Cable Modem to Save Cash and Other Common Digital Fees to Avoid

Money site LiveCheap offers five suggestions for identifying and cutting down on your monthly digital bill without changing your service, potentially saving you hundreds of dollars. One way? Buy rather than rent your cable modem.

Photo by Rae Whitlock.

By tackling common and hidden fees, the folks at LiveCheap were able to save $500 from their yearly bill. They tackled some issues like eliminating the "free" VoIP line that comes bundled with your cable and removing unnecessary services from your cell phone plan. Our favorite cost-cutting measure included buying your cable modem box:

Even if you've already negotiated the best possible cable deal with your provider, there's one charge that you probably missed: the cable box fee or the cable modem fee. If your cable service is provided by Charter Communications, CableVision or another big operator, they'll charge you a whopping $5 to $6.95 a month for each of these boxes. $10 - $12 a month for both of these works out to over $120 a year. If you're stuck to cable, you can purchase a digital cable box in good condition online for about $30 and the cable modem will cost you another $25. It will take all of 6 months to recoup the cost.

Annual fee savings? $130. For a few other suggestions for how you can cut down on your digital bill, hit the link below.

5 Overlooked Digital Charges to Eliminate and Save $500 [LiveCheap via The Consumerist]

Is Charter Tricking Customers Into Renting Unnecessary Routers?

One savvy Reddit user seems to think so! Also: hoards of other disgruntled and/or confused customers, according to Google. The scam? Charter's convincing customers that their perfectly good router hardware—including the Linksys WRT54G—just doesn't work with the ISP.

As reported by ZachSka87:

I use a LinkSys router. I've had it set up and working perfectly for over a year. Well, the past few months, we've had several disconnects from Charter. We're paying for 10mbps service, but for the past week straight it would not go above 2mbps, and that's if it worked at all. We called Charter, and they had us plug the modem directly into the machine and Voila! over 20mbps speeds!

Maybe the router's got configuration issues! Or maybe it's just worn out! Or not:

I suspected that they might have blocked the spectrum of Linksys MAC addresses, so I cloned my PC's MAC address to the Linksys and it INSTANTLY connected. Our bad, out of date, incompatible Linksys router suddenly is getting the 20mbps speeds that our PC's were getting.

I'm not sure about the specific allegation that they've completely blocked Linksys routers' MAC addresses, since there do seem to be other—though obscure—ways to work around the issue, but this kind of thing (router blocking, specifically) is far from unheard of even for major ISPs. Charter's service does make it severely inconvenient for a computer-savvy person (or impossible for your average customer) to user popular router hardware that they already own, pushing them to rent or buy sanctioned, official router hardware like this, which probably isn't any more capable the the old WRT54G piece you've got sitting behind your desk already:

There's a small chance this is all some kind of misunderstanding, but with plenty of similar stories scattered around the internet alleging the exact same thing—sudden connection failure, then a hard sell for a new router over the phone—it's hard to imagine Charter coming out of this looking good. [Reddit]

Take the Consumer Broadband Test, Help the FCC Keep ISPs In Check

Feel like your broadband's not living up to how it's advertised? Here's your chance to prove it: the FCC's introduced a Consumer Broadband Test that'll let you know exactly how good a connection you've got.

The test is in beta, but can be used for both fixed and mobile broadband, and there are already iPhone and Android apps available for download. You can already figure out your broadband speed with YouTube, but the info the FCC collects will be used by the agency to determine the state of broadband in the US. Hopefully it'll also be ammo to help reconcile the difference between hyperspeed ISP claims and your pokey broadband reality. [Broadband Task Force via Boing Boing]

Internode Launches Mobile Data Service On Back Of Optus 3G

By Nick Broughall

Internode have jumped on the mobile data train by hopping into bed with Optus. Their mobile service, called NodeMobile Data, will be available from tomorrow, and uses the Optus 3G infrastructure.Pricing starts at $14.95 a month for 250MB, or you can get 3GB for $39.95 a month, which all seems to hang on the more expensive side of the mobile data spectrum (Three offers 1GB for $15 a month and Vodafone offers 5GB for $40). Downloads and uploads count towards the data consumption figure as well, so there’ll be no torrenting here, thank you very much.

Internode customers can get a free USB modem by signing up for 24 months, while non-Internodies will have to fork out $199. You can bring your own modem for a setup fee of $25 (for the SIM card).

Gus over at Lifehacker has a full rundown of the extra data charges, but suffice to say that there are more appealing mobile broadband deals on the market.

[Internode]