Student broadband, issue with minimum terms

engineer79

I'm a student who's just arranged housing for the next academic year (starting this summer). I was idly looking around the websites of broadband companies to get an idea of how much it's likely to cost us next year.

The problem I've noticed is that nobody serving our area with fibre will offer anything less than an 18 month minimum term. We'll almost certainly only be living in this house for one year so committing to 18 months is not an option.

The companies I've found that will still offer 12 month terms:

• Virgin Media - might be an option, but it looks like a bit of a pain as they'd have to come out to install a line, plus I haven't heard good things about customer service.
• Hyperoptic - doesn't serve our area so not an option
  
• 5G - not looked into in too much detail as I'm not sure about coverage. How reliable is the Ofcom checker in this regard?
  
• Bundling services (Unihomes etc.) - seem a bit expensive compared to arranging things separately but might have to be what we end up going with

Really, what we want is just a simple, reasonably fast FTTP connection that doesn't require us to commit for longer than 12 months. Will anyone offer this?

400ixl

Is it served by Openreach or one of the Altnet suppliers?

If Openreach, Plusnet may do a 12 month contract. If Cityfibre for example, then via Reddit you may be able to get something like Yayzi who you can get a monthly deal with.

Wonka_2

Mine agreed an 18mth contract at beginning of Y2 and transferred to new property for Y3 - whilst Virgins online help was pretty useless they befriended the local in-store team who sorted stuff for them even including dongles when it wasn’t set up properly at the beginning of Y3

teaselMay

3's broadband is good if you've 4 or 5G reception. I've not checked recently but when I took my contract out there was a 30 day money back if you weren't happy (eg if reception not good enough) and there was an option for a rolling contract rather than 12 or 24 months. You can also just move the router with you when you move too.

I've been very happy with it, using a phone on 3 reception isn't great here, but the broadband is more reliable and faster than when I had Virgin cable or Plusnet via openreach network. 

QrizB

engineer79 said:

I'm a student who's just arranged housing for the next academic year (starting this summer). I was idly looking around the websites of broadband companies to get an idea of how much it's likely to cost us next year.

My son (currently at uni) agreed with his flatmates that they'd share an "unlimited" SIM on a rolling monthly contract in a 4/5G router. It works well for them. Might work for you too?

I think it's a Grade C one of these:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285185066956

plus a £15pm iD Mobile SIM. (Check network coverage before choosing a supplier.)

The only real problem was that they were near a school and when the local school day ended, for ~30 minutes their mobile cell was saturated by schoolkids all trying to use it for whatever-schoolkids-use-their-phones-for.

matelodave

We use one of these in our caravan - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284308086939?

Get a cheap paygo sim from each of the suppliers and see what works where you'll be living and what speeds you can get (you can use your mobile phone to do the testing, but a proper router will be better for long time use).

We use a 3 sim which seems to be OK in most parts of the country but we only get around 25mbit/s where we live in rural Cambridgeshire.

In the end you really need to decide what sort of speed/bandwidth you want - if everyone want to play games, download videos etc then you need to decide what is most important - cost, speed, access etc

onomatopoeia99

A&A will do 12 month terms on fibre to the premises on the Openreach network and 1 month on the CityFibre network.

You haven't say what networks are present / available at the property so all anyone cna do is guess .

engineer79

Sorry, should have mentioned... it's served by both Openreach and one of the small local startup providers.

It turns out said small startup provider will offer a 12 month term directly with them. (I hadn't thought of checking their site as I didn't realise they acted directly as an ISP - I thought they just resold their capacity to other ISPs) so problem solved!

Thanks everyone for your helpful responses.