Back to part 1 – Switching from fixed-contract Internet, telephone, and TV providers
Cord cutter or Cord buster generally means not getting your TV services from the likes of Virgin or Sky, streaming rather than using packaged TV services. Though we have taken Cord Cutting a stage further.
Whilst we were looking into dispensing with Virgin’s packaged TV services, I found the following website quite useful:
CordBusters it is worth a visit if you want to save some money on your entertainment packages.
We can vary our streaming packages on a monthly basis thanks to our savings from ditching packaged TV. We have used streaming content from the following providers:
- Amazon prime
- Netflix
- Disney+
- Now (Movies & TV)
- Apple TV
There are also new offerings from Paramount and other studios, so plenty of choice, effectively TV content you in control.
What do we mean when we suggest we’ve gone further than normal cord cutting? Well now, we only get our internet connection via 4G connections, we got a second 4G modem, so we use both SMARTY and VOXI. The ASUS router disabled some of its other capabilities when we used dual WAN. The Asus router also only used the primary WAN connection till it fails, then automatically fails over to the secondary WAN.
Ian researched to regain the disabled featured in the ASUS router and to see if he could use multiple WAN connections simultaneously. The best solution appeared to be a Multi-WAN router, though these usually come in 2 ‘flavours’, Load Balancing and Link Aggregation.
On paper the Link Aggregation sounds the more tempting option, promising to link up multi connections to gain more speed, but with most things there is a but, the connection is only as fast as the slowest connection, so the router could end up being not a great experience.
Load-balancing WAN routers act as traffic cops for your network, ensuring they handle all internet requests in such a way that maximizes speed and capacity utilization, so that your WAN connections are not overloaded, which could negatively impact performance. A load-balancing router sits behind WAN routers and routes external client requests across your network.
Ian opted for a Load Balancing router from TP-Link. On business class products, TP-Link has a very good warranty scheme. In the past, one managed switch failed, which was immediately replaced by TP-Link.
This is the Multi-WAN router Ian purchased:
TP-Link SafeStream Business Gigabit Multi-WAN VPN Router ←(paid link)
It is then just a matter of getting the configuration correct. If anyone wishes to see how we configured our settings, we are happy to share them in .pdf format for the cost of a 
, click here for details
People may think that 4G might provide a poor connection. Please see the test results below:
It is worth considering the use of 4G routers for users who live in a rural area with poor broadband speeds, possibly a more affordable option than “Starlink”.
Attached to the Huawei routers is a cheap external antenna, which is placed inside a downstairs window:
4G LTE Antenna: 4G Antennas Outdoor SMA Male ←(paid link)
Admittedly, there is some variability in the 4G signal that we get, but using 2 different carriers which are also using different cell phone towers, this assures us of always having internet access, unless we have a power outage. So our internet connections are on 30 day rolling contracts. A bonus is that IP addresses assigned to us change frequently and geographically.
Both Netflix and Prime Video were simultaneously streaming HD content on our WAN routers, as shown in the following two images. The router handling SMARTY easily handled both streaming channels.
We would advise anyone that has an internet connection to take a look into using Pi-Hole. We recommend it, and here we show an example of why.
Unbelievably, using ‘unlimited data’ on both SMARTY and VOXI, on 30 day rolling contracts still works out cheaper than Virgin Media. Admittedly, there are some upfront costs, but you gain long-term savings and resilience.
Continued in part 3 – Regaining ‘fixed’ or landline telephones