Monthly Cost Reduction Strategy 2013: Timewarner Cable +Faster Internet Speed

My Timewarner Cable bill was not looking good and looking at it makes me feel that I am wasting resources. I have an internet service, a cable tv service and a digital phone service with TWC. At first, I did not know where to start but as I read and examine my cable bill, I noticed a few items which are $12.00 but I had 3 of each and I’m also leasing a modem box.

In my inventory, I found the following:
3 DVR cable box, $12.99 ea.
1 Internet Modem Lease, $5.99 ea
International Calling Plan, $20.00

When I did a walkthrough around the rooms in the house, I noticed that we rarely used all three DVR’s. Timewarner now has On Demand programming and if you miss your show, all you have to do is go to the Primetime On  Demand channel and watch it there. My only hurdle was convincing the wife but that was no brainer since she told me she does not use it regularly.

I went to the local TWC office and returned 2 DVR boxes, cancelled my International Calling Plan and cancelled my Internet Modem lease since they advertised that we can have our own internet modem now for as long as it is listed in their “preferred list’.

By the end of the day, I dropped around $90.00 off my cable bill.

Here’s the information on how to purchase your own internet modem if you are a Timewarner customer.
1. Purchase an internet modem, mine is Motorola Suftboard SB6141 from Amazon, the review is good. Here’s the full TWC Approved Modem List
2. Upon arrival of the modem, read the manual and connect the modem in place of the old modem.  If you have a digital phone service, you will need to split the cable signal using a splitter because you will need to have two modems at your end, one for internet and one for the phone service.  If you don’t have a splitter, get the splitter ahead of time.
3. Call Timewarner Cable and explain to them that you bought your own modem, they will activate the modem for you.
4. Once activated, run a speed test form your pc. Use http://www.speedtest.net/ 
5. END

Speedtest revealed the following:
Old Modem
Download speed =10Mbps
Upload Speed=.95Mbps

New Modem:
Download speed =16Mbps
Upload Speed=1.07Mbps

Speedtest results:

Modem Setup:
The two vertical boxes are the modems.  The black box is the old modem and the white box is the new Motorola modem.  Yes, I’m old school, I’m still using the WRT54G wireless router but this is not an ordinary WRT54G.  This router has been rooted with DD-WRT firmware.  Visit DD-WRT’s website if you are interested in a simple mod that can speed up your wireless connections.