I don’t have either cable or dedicated WiFi. I have a smart phone with unlimited internet and a 7Gb hot spot for WiFi, but I usually just end up using my phone, not the hot spot. And I’ve been out of college for a while - I just don’t have the need.
Neither kid has cable, but each has a roku box/stick to use with their TV over their wireless internet–which they pay for.
D1 pays for Netflix; her roomie pays for Hulu–which they share. And they watch HBO using my acct. D2 watches Netflix & HBO using my acct.
All my H watches is the news and sports and therefore we have a large cable bundle here at home and large dish package at our cabin. We have a Roku TV. If I could figure out a way to cut cable where H could still watch his sports I would do it. He watches NHL, MLB, golf , NFL, BTN, and every college sport possible. He DVRs multiple games. Yes, he is a sports junkie. 
If anyone has tips on getting all the worldwide soccer and tennis matches without cable, please let me know! That’s what has kept us paying an expensive monthly cable bill.
If you’ve got to have sports, look into Sling TV. It’s live TV (commercials and all) delivered via the internet. $20 a month gets 30 channels including 3 ESPN. A roku will let a person put multiple services at his fingertips. And yes, antennas work for local channels.
My oldest uses a Roku and has a few streaming services, some paid, some free.
Keep in mind that the $20 a month internet is really low. You may need more punch if you’ll be doing a lot of streaming. And watch data limits. The base packages are often pretty limited and once all the tv comes through streaming, you can find yourself out of data faster than you might think.
Baseball is my downfall. The only way to watch my Dodgers is cable. And so, I’m stuck with cable. The moment they allow me to subscribe to MLB.TV and watch the Dodgers in LA, I’m cutting the cord. I mostly stream shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO/Showtime (free through work).
We have basic cable which does not include any sports channels. When there is a game on that I want to watch (such as on ESPN) I use the computer and plug it into the TV as others have mentioned. I also use my parents cable provider information to login to watchespn so I can stream it. Unfortunately without cable I would get zero channels, so I stuck paying for basic cable and high speed internet.
Why would anyone ever want cable? (I ask that as a 40something cord-never.) The only time I’ve ever had cable is during the 3 years I lived in an apartment that had it bundled into the rent, and I didn’t get the big deal of it.
Now, I do get my internet from the local cable provider, and yes, it would be discounted if I got a cable TV subscription, too, but internet+TV costs more than internet alone, so I see no point in getting something I’ll never use.
If I really want to watch something I’ll use my Amazon Prime subscription or pay to watch something once without a subscription from one of the streaming services that allows that. (I don’t care about sports—I’d rather take less time and watch the highlights later on YouTube, if I’m really interested.)
I started looking at Sling today- so is the idea you buy an access device (Roku, ATV, etc,) and Sling provides the tv service itself? Plus, Netflix, Prime, whatever? Any simple place to go to learn and compare? No sports needed here, not a one.
Sling now offer sports packages.
Why have cable? More than one tv watcher and more than one TV. The price of those streaming services starts to add up if you need to be able to stream to more than one device at a time.
@dfbdfb Why would anyone need cable?
- In our city, because of the geography of so many canyons, reception is notoriously bad for OTA without a rooftop antenna and almost no one has one of those. 2 broadcast stations are on 1 tower and the other 2 major broadcast stations are on a different tower 25 miles away. Easy indoor antennas just don’t work for us. So if you have wanted local channels, you pretty much had to have cable just for reception.
- Sports - The #1 reason for many. So many sports are spread throughout various cable channels. As someone else mentioned, you can’t get your local baseball team on MLB.tv, so that too is an issue if you’re favorite team is the local team.
- Convenience - Frankly, it just works compared to streaming which takes a little more effort. Much easier to change channels IMO. More stable connection. Much easier for my 80 year old parents to use than to deal with all the early adopter phase of streaming.
- Habit - When you’ve become accustomed to it for over 30 years, it’s tough to change.
That said, I have just started a streaming bundle and will terminate our cable TV soon. I’ve determined I can get enough sports, although I may miss out on a few things. The only local we really watch is CBS and their app streams the local channel so that works for us. I can live with the slightly more ponderous method of flipping between channels to cut the TV portion of the bill in half or more. Having all video apps on one device is actually a plus in the convenience column. I figure we’ll save enough to easily afford a season of MLB.tv which will be a nice bonus. So on balance, I can live with some inconveniences for the cost savings. I’m excited to finally have some competition for our provider choice now that is easily switchable.
My roommate/tenant and I have cable/internet mainly because my building has some arrangement with the local cable company and TV reception without it is abysmal in my area. We pay less than $90/month for cable/internet package which includes a few sports channels and broadband internet which is fine for our needs.
Roommate uses it for sports and movies. I use it for movies, infotainment from cable news channels, natgeo, PBS, foreign language broadcasts, etc. He uses cable TV more than I do whereas I use the internet connection more intensely(large file uploads/downloads for work related purposes).
I get the whole sports thing, so that’s a whole different discussion, but aside from that I guess that I really don’t care enough about watching television to get why I’d pay the cable company for it. (And I can’t get good OTA reception where I am, either). I’d rather be able to pick and choose individual items—and it appears I’m not alone, I’m just older than most who feel that way.
The cable companies’ business model is dying. The weird thing is that they really do appear to know it, but are doubling down on it anyway.
dfbdfb, I joke that Verizon’s web sites are meant to confuse us into submission.