Student broadband - best providers?

[RockaLock]

DS1 is just going to into his second year at uni (in London) and will be renting a flat with 2 friends.

The flat doesn’t have full fibre broadband, and obviously they aren’t allowed to put in a new connection, so it will have to be just fibre / part fibre broadband.

Most providers on seem to offer 24 month contracts, but obviously their contract is only a 12 month rental contract.

Can anyone recommend any providers that actually cater well for students - I.e. basic broadband, and 12month contracts?

You can get routers/access points that you place data sims in (and can sometimes pick up quite good deals for these). They could club together and not bother with a wired connection. Or even hotspot from their phones. It's not going to be the best thing ever, and depends on local connectivity, but maybe a cheaper/alternative option. Would be interested to know how well these work for video calls etc.

Not that I know what mobile reliability is like in London! There has been some moaning and groaning that nationwide signal/service has been going downhill rapidly. (More and more people sharing the network, more video consumption etc?)

Scancom do a data sim. Here discounted to £65 valid until Aug 2026, for 1000GB a month. It would need to be partnered with a device to share that connection. Check hotukdeals and search for data sim and ask there perhaps for advice.

www.scancom.co.uk/collections/three-preloaded/products/three-1000gb-preloaded-data-sim-per-month-choose-your-expiry?variant=43524675240112

Thanks @FilterBubble. We did think about mobile broadband, but often In London now when your phone says you have a full 5G signal, you in fact have no internet access because there are just too many people using up all the bandwidth. Admittedly this only seems to happen in very central London, but he is living quite close to the centre (lucky boy!) so we are not sure how reliable it would be.

Type "12m broadband contracts" into Google.
MSE was my 1st response with various options.

Yes, thank you, obviously I’ve googled.

But the devil is in the detail. For example, although that hyperoptic ad says “fibre broadband”, actually if you look at their website they mean full fibre, which my DS can’t install in his flat. Even if you do searches on comparison sites and specify part fibre, all the results are for full fibre.

Most providers only seem to do 24m contracts for fibre. The only providers we have found that do 12m fibre (and that are available at the flat) are BT and EE, at a pretty scandalous cost of £35pm for slow speeds. Scandalous, because you can get full fibre at many times the speed for about half that price.

I suppose maybe my question should have been “does anyone know of any student discounts on fibre broadband” - obviously we have also googled that but you never know what offers others might have come across that you’ve missed.

Virgin do student contracts - might be worth a look.

https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/student

Would the low income contracts be of any use? I haven't looked at the detail of them, but would be worth checking.

And, maybe worth talking to the landlord, seeing if they would get it & take out the contract - but obviously add to the rent. It would make the property more attractive to future renters.

FWIW, my ds took a 6m room let in a shared house and after he'd moved it in turned out the WiFi was a mobile WiFi and was rubbish, plus the landlord was paying far more for it that would for a physical connection.
Ds nagged the agents and they've now had a proper connection fitted to the property.

One of mine had a 24m contract with Vodafone which you could switch to another address once per contract. We took it over after 12m (as we were out of contract) when he moved to his next house which already had broadband included.

@RockaLock my DD was in the same position and has been able to get a 12month contract with Virgin. We checked others and this was the most competitive.