I moved from the US and I’ve been living in a service apartment for a couple weeks and find no need for landline telephone or cable/sat TV. As long as I have broadband, I think I’m able to satisfy my communication and entertainment needs.
Next month I’m moving into a permanent apartment in a building where I’ll have to pay my own utilities. Does anyone live without a landline and cable TV? Can you still get broadband or is there no “naked” option? I would plan to just have a cell phone and use Skype outbound from home, if I really felt I needed a U.S. phone # I would consider Magic Jack but don’t really see the point as all of my friends and family use Skype or GTalk.
I haven’t had a landline since 2003 or 2004. They are obsolete!
I have a landline because its so much cheaper than the cellphone. No cable or broadband. No problem.
Didn’t have a land line in our last place, but the mobile reception is crap here, so we got one. The monthly cost for us is about NT$80 which shows how much we use it…
Can’t live without broadband though and my GF is watching cable so can’t really give that up either…
I think landlines and TV (of any kind) are more for locals. I’m not in the house enough for a landline to be useful. I stopped my cable recently as there wasn’t enough English content there. The TV is now hooked up to my computer as downloaded content is newer and of better quality than what is shown on TV here. I use Skype for international calls.
I think that all I have watched on cable for the past 6 or 7 years is BBC. I can’t live without my BBC.
How do you get broadband in your home? cable? telephone? wi-fi?
How do you get broadband in your home? cable? telephone? wi-fi?[/quote]
Cable…but I live in the UAE now.
I have a land-line, cable and broadband (I have ADSL broadband that comes with my land-line and costs me about NT$1000/month give or take a NT$100). I watch some local Chinese language cable, but mostly I use it for cartoons for the boy (not that he watches much TV), and the English movie channels which sometime have good content. Also, my wife has her shows that she watches.
Otherwise I have a HAVA stream from SatTV for sports and other content that isn’t available on local cable.
I hardly ever use my cel phone except for when I’m out of the house and I really need to get hold of someone. That said, I don’t use the phone (landline or cel) much.
To get a DSL line in Taiwan, you need to pay for the telephone. Irritating, considering it’s a large portion of the cost of the bill. I don’t use it, since I have a cell phone. Also, the telephone company wouldn’t do it, until my boss agreed to back a two year contract. That might be different in Taipei, though.
I don’t know about cable. I download all the tv I watch. In the US, you can get cable tv and cable internet access separate. BUT, because of “bundling”, it’s cheaper to get the very basic cable selection and internet access.