I’ve finally joined the group of Canadians who are enjoying streaming media services from the US, which are often blocked for Canadian IP addresses.
This means Hulu, US TV channel networks, N*tflix, Spotify and pretty much whatever else you can imagine. But those are the services I’m using so far.
How I did this is no secret. People have been telling me to do this for a while and I’ve just been too lazy to make the switch.
Well, on Saturday night last week it took me literally 10 minutes. Maybe less. All I did was go visit Unblock US and get a free trial.
The signup process is unbelievably easy. Enter your email and presto. You’re done. They give you the DNS settings to paste into your router settings. Your Internet traffic now all flows through the US and sites such as Hulu, and apps like Spotify, suddenly JUST WORK.
Click here to go get a trial of Unblock-US
Pricing: The US unblocking service costs $5 per month, and includes a one week free trial. They do not ask for any financial information for the trial, so it’s super easy to do, and quite cheap to maintain.
Truth be told, the REAL reason I made this switch is because I got to see just how much better the US version of N-flix is. In case you are curious why I’m not spelling it out, I just don’t want my site Google-able for that particular term in connection with Canadian access to a US account.
Anyway, setting up a US subscription was a piece of cake. No, you do not need a US credit card to subscribe. Just sign up while visiting via your VPN service (unblock-us, in my case). Make sure that if you have an existing Canadian account, you sign up using a different email address and different credit card.
That’s it. You’ll have a US account up and running in less than 10 minutes.
I gotta say I love Spotify.
Oh, one last comment on this! The whole notion of funnelling all my traffic through a US VPN just reminds me how cheap bandwidth really is on a wireline network. I mean, if my TekSavvy connection lets me run 300 gigs per month, and I’m paying $5 for VPN service, then the per-gigabyte cost of bandwidth must be less than 1.7 cents per gig. Obviously it has to be WAY less than that, or services like Unblock-US wouldn’t be able to make a profit.
Whoever believes the Cable company claims that a gig costs about a dollar? Not I.
Hi, I'm Chris Umiastowski. I'm a 10-year veteran of sell side equity research and this is where I come to connect with friends on all things related to tech investing.
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I been using these guys for over a year now, great service.
Yeah I wish I had started sooner!
All bandwidth isn’t created equal. That data center just has to connect to a backbone. The cable company has to run out to your house.
Also, as usage goes up (from the perspective of someone buying bandwidth in a data center), you are more likely paying based on peak usage, not data transfer. So, different models. Rough order of magnitude is probably $50 per megabit.
Also, I dont know anything about unblock us, but I found this explanation – it’s not a VPN, and the data isn’t passing through them.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1896972
Interesting that there seems to be some negative feeling from Artists towards Spotify in some blogs I’ve ready recently. Looks to be around royalties or the lack/absence thereof. Looks like there are still many challenges in the digital economy but then I still remember when there was a stamp in the inner sleeves of LPs that told us that home taping was killing music.
Ha ha! I bet you guys haven’t heard of tunlr. They offer the same service for free !
The only hurdle to accessing this is of course human limitations and the
fact that the brain does not function solely as a
learning tool for the human being. I believe my exact
words were “I don’t want to be your dirty little secret. The buccal cavity is a small cavity that has neither jaws nor teeth.