Yep, it's true, after almost 10 months of being in my new flat in West London, I still do not have an internet connection.
 
All my friends think i'm crazy going this long with out being plugged in, especially considering the job I'm in and how much I love what I do, but I have to be honest and say I haven't really missed it all that much.
 
My last flat in the East End of London (moved in about three years ago) was internet free for all of about two weeks while my old flat mate and I waited for the previous tenant to cancel their account so we could sign up for the unlimited broadband package. But even then there was an unsecured wireless connection we piggy backed on until we got set up.
 
Me and my new flat mate, moved into this new place in West London almost 10 months ago, and from what I can gather this flat has been empty for quite some time, long enough for BT to disconnect the phone line from the junction box at the end of the road, and then have the cheek to demand an extortionate amount of money in order for them to send out an engineer to reconnect it. No thanks.
 
Unfortunately there isn't any digital services installed down our road, nor is there any sniff of a wireless connection at all, so getting the phone line connected was basically our only option of getting plugged back in to the matrix.
 
Whilst I struggled with the idea of coughing up wads of cash to BT, I took a good look at my internet usage and my current circumstances and came to the conclusion that I really didn't need it that much.
 
See, back in my East End flat, I think I did actually need it, I had only just moved back to the UK from a few years in Australia, I only had a really old 'WAP' enabled mobile phone, and I was looking for work full time. Have you tried looking for work as a developer with out the internet?! It would have been a nightmare, I was constantly checking out new jobs on the web all day, I just don't know how I would have done it with out an internet connection. Weirdly, the job I ended up getting I got through a friend and not the internet, so you could argue that I didn't even need it for that, but we'll forget about that ;)
 
So, do I really need the internet at home? I'm not sure I do.
 
What do I really need the internet for these days?
 
It's not job hunting. I'm not actively looking for work at the moment, and even if I was, I would much rather go through the London .Net Community than face the recruitment agents again.
 
What else?
 
The way I see it, three things really:

    * Email
    * Twitter
    * News feeds

I have an HTC Touch HD mobile phone now, with an internet bundle that gives me 500MB of download allowance, and I can do all three of these things very happily on my phone these days.
 
What else do I do on my PC at home? I hack away at various bits of code in my spare time, and even when I'm at home doing that on my laptop and really need to grab some install package from somewhere, or clone some repository, I can plug in my phone and use it to connect to the internet (as I'm doing right now as I type this!) and download it/check it out.
 
So do I really need the internet?
 
I can keep up to speed on all the goings on via Twitter and Google Reader on my phone, and I've also got push email setup on it so it vibrates every time I get a personal email, it also integrates with my google calender. And I can, on the rare ocasion I need to, connect my laptop via my phone to the internet to grab things.
 
Do I need to spend any more money each month on an internet connection?
 
Probably not in all honesty, but in about a week or so, the flat will be finally hooked up to the internet again.
 
About 12 weeks ago I was very ill, and spent a horrible 5 days at home on the sofa with nothing but Freeview TV. I spent most of the time between flicking around during the adverts, watching repeats of Top Gear on Dave, and it almost sent me crazy. What else was I supposed to do? I love to read (you ever read Dilbert?! hehe, in joke...), but when I'm ill it gives me a headache trying to read, not to mention my lack of concentration means that I never remember any of what I've read, and so, without the internet, all that was left was the crap on TV.
 
Actually, it did send me mental, cus at the end of the 4th day I ended up phoning up Sky and ordering the TV, Phone and Broadband package from them! And the good thing about doing that was Sky covered the BT charge to reconnect the phone line!
 
Well, we've got the TV and the phone line setup now, we're just waiting for the wireless router to turn up and we're back on the information superhighway, but to be honest, I dont think I'm going to be using it that much, although I bet I'll get back into the habbit of mindless surffing around on populrs.com and alltop.com for hours and hours and hours at 2am when I've got work the next day.
 
Brilliant.