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Students

Posted on 11 Feb 2009 at 10:30

A broadband connection is as vital to the modern student as the right textbooks and a bottle opener. Yet setting up an ADSL connection in student accommodation can prove to be hugely problematic.

For university students, the problem isn't so much the cost of getting an ADSL connection as getting one at all. First, there's the issue of the phone line: with mobile phones so prevalent, many student houses have done away with a landline altogether. If there's no active line running into the house, BT will charge £125 just to switch it back on. But the dealbreaker is that BT (and most other telecoms companies) demand that new account holders sign up for a minimum of a year - which isn't much use in student digs, where people often stay for only nine months at a time.

Even if the phone line is already up and running, most ADSL providers will also demand that users sign up for a minimum term of one year. This is especially true of the low-cost or even "free" broadband bundle deals, where 18-month contracts are common. Even those ISPs that claim to offer month-by-month contracts can impose costly cancellation or equipment fees if the account is cancelled within the first year. Check the terms of any contract scrupulously before signing up. An honourable exception is Zen Internet - winner of PC Pro's reader-voted Broadband Award for the past five years - which offers rolling monthly contracts, albeit at the more expensive end of the scale.

Mobile broadband is a far more flexible option for students. While the best deals are still found on lengthy contracts, students can obviously take their mobile dongle with them as they move between halls of residence, student houses and home again during the summer. It also means you can take a laptop on to campus and know you'll always have access to a broadband connection, without having to find a gap in the computer room or a Wi-Fi hotspot. Better still, there's no line rental to pay, and with mobile broadband deals starting from £10 a month (albeit with tight-fitting 1GB data caps), it means more of the grant can go on beer money rather than broadband.

The only potential pitfall is 3G coverage. While students at UCL, Oxford and other major inner-city campuses will probably be bathed in HSDPA coverage, students at Aberystwyth might well struggle. The coverage maps provided by the networks are so broad brushstroke that it's almost impossible to tell what kind of connection you'll receive until you actually arrive at your location. Even our office in Central London can struggle to get a decent 3G connection on some networks, let alone a basement bedroom in Nottingham. Before committing to a mobile broadband contract, it would be a good idea to check the signal strength of your chosen network on your mobile (or a friend's) to get a fair indication of the connection you can expect at both your accommodation and university campus.

Best broadband deal: if you can forego downloading albums and watching iPlayer, 3's £10 per month Broadband Lite package, with a 1GB data cap, may suffice. For those who need a little extra, Vodafone's £15 per month deal offers one of the fastest services on the market, a 3GB cap and only binds you to a 12-month deal, allowing you to move to another network without penalty if your second-year digs aren't getting a clear 3G signal on the network.

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