Student broadband: what to sort before you move in

Student broadband is a nine month problem sold on twelve month terms. The tenancy runs from September to June, the contract runs a full year, and somewhere in that gap is a house nobody lives in still being billed for a connection nobody uses. Add five people who all want the fastest thing going and none of whom want their name on the bill, and the cheapest headline price stops being the thing that matters. Two decisions do most of the work here. How long the term runs, and whose name goes on it.

How long does student broadband have to tie you in?

Longer than your tenancy, in most cases. Ofcom's general conditions require every provider to make at least one contract available with a minimum term of twelve months, and cap any commitment at twenty four, which is the protection working in your favour at the top end. There is no equivalent rule at the bottom: nothing obliges anybody to sell you nine months, or a term that ends when your lease does.

Ofcom runs a monitoring programme on that twelve month requirement, which tells you how often providers would rather you took the eighteen or twenty four month deal. Those longer terms usually carry the lower monthly price, and that is the trade you are being offered: three months of unused service against a few pounds a month. Sometimes the maths favours the long deal even with the waste in it. Work it out on the total rather than the monthly figure, because the monthly figure is designed to win that comparison.

The other route is a rolling monthly deal, where you pay more per month and can leave with a month's notice. Our guide to no contract broadband sets out who actually sells one and what the setup fee tends to do to the saving.

Who is actually liable for the bill?

The person named on the account, for all of it. Not a share, not a fifth, and not whatever the group chat agreed in August. The provider has one contract with one customer, and if the money stops arriving it pursues that customer for the full balance.

This is the part of student broadband that causes real damage, because it outlasts the house. A missed run of payments sits on one person's credit file, and that person then finds it follows them into a phone contract or a tenancy reference two years later, long after everyone has stopped speaking about who owed what.

There is no clever structure that fixes it. What helps is being deliberate rather than accidental about it.

• Pick the person staying longest. Whoever is least likely to move out in March, and ideally somebody who will still be reachable in July when the final bill lands.
• Collect the money before it is due, not after. A standing order from each housemate dated a few days before the direct debit leaves the named account. Chasing after the fact is where this always fails.
• Write down the amount and the end date. A note in the group chat is enough. It is not enforceable against the provider, but it settles the argument between you.
• Say who pays the exit fee. Agree it while everybody is still friendly, because the person who leaves first is rarely the person holding the contract.

If somebody does leave early and the house wants out, our guide on broadband exit fees explains how the remaining months are usually charged, which is generally the whole term less any discount rather than a penalty on top.

Is there already a connection in the house?

Very often, and it is the first thing to check because it changes the timescale completely. A house that has had broadband before usually has the physical work already done, so a new order is a switch rather than an installation. Days, in other words, instead of the two to three weeks a fresh install can run to.

Ask the landlord or the outgoing tenants which network the line runs on, not which provider they paid. The network is what decides your options. Where the house sits on a full fibre network that sells to other providers, a switch takes care of itself and you keep the choice. Where it sits on a network that only sells its own service, that company is the market at your address until somebody else builds.

Two warnings on inherited connections. An unpaid balance from previous tenants is their debt and not yours, so do not agree to clear it to get the line turned on. And a router left in a cupboard belongs to whoever the contract was with, which is worth knowing before somebody bins it.

What happens over the summer

You keep paying, in almost every case. Cancelling inside a minimum term does not end the obligation, it usually just brings forward the remaining months as one bill, so the summer saving people imagine is mostly not there.

The decision worth making is the one at the start. If the house genuinely empties in June, price the rolling monthly deal against the twelve month one across the months you will actually use it, and include any setup or router fee on both sides. If somebody is staying through the summer, or the same group is taking the house again next year, the twelve month deal usually wins comfortably and the gap stops mattering.

One thing genuinely worth checking rather than assuming: if anybody in the house receives Universal Credit, a social tariff may be cheaper than any student offer on the market. Our guide to broadband social tariffs covers who qualifies and how to ask for one without being sold something else instead.

How much speed does a house share need?

Less than five people will tell you, and more than a single person needs. The load in a shared house is not one enormous download, it is several medium ones at the same time in the evening, which is a different problem: it is handled better by a connection that holds up under simultaneous use than by a bigger headline number.

Full fibre helps here for a reason that rarely makes the advert, which is upload. A house where three people are on video calls at once is sending as much as it receives, and the older part-fibre connections are heavily weighted towards download. Our guide on what broadband speed you need works through the arithmetic for a household rather than for one laptop.

Be sceptical about the top tier. In a rented house with thick walls and one router in the hall, the limit on what anybody experiences is usually the wifi rather than the line, and paying for a gigabit service that the building cannot carry to the back bedroom is the most common way students overspend on this.

The fourteen days worth knowing about

Order online or over the phone and you have a cooling off period of at least fourteen days in which you can cancel for any reason, under the Consumer Contracts Regulations. Citizens Advice sets out how it works and when the clock starts, which is generally the day after the contract is made, or later if equipment or the terms arrive after that.

It matters more in September than at any other time of year, because that is when four people order four things in a week and two of them turn out to be duplicates. If the house has accidentally taken two services, or ordered before finding out the line was already live, that window is how you undo it cleanly rather than expensively. Cancel in writing, and keep the reply.

Where to start

With the address, not the deals page. Put the postcode into our availability checker and find out which networks actually reach the house, because in a student area the answer varies street by street and the national brands are not always the cheapest thing available. Then decide the term and the named person before anybody clicks buy.

Ten minutes on those two questions is worth more than any discount code. The money in student broadband is not lost on the monthly price. It is lost on months nobody used and a bill one person was left holding.

Frequently asked questions

Can you get a nine month broadband contract for a student year?

Nothing obliges a provider to sell one, so treat it as a bonus rather than a plan. Ofcom requires every provider to offer at least one contract with a twelve month minimum term, and caps any commitment at twenty four months, but there is no rule about anything shorter. Where a nine month or termly deal exists it is a commercial offer that can be withdrawn, so read what happens at the end of it before you sign.

Who has to pay if a housemate stops paying their share?

Whoever is named on the account. The provider has a contract with that one person and can pursue them for the whole balance, not a fifth of it, and a private agreement between housemates does not change that. It is the person named who takes the credit file damage too, which is the part most house shares never discuss.

Should you cancel the broadband when you go home for summer?

Only if you can afford to lose it. Cancelling inside a minimum term usually means paying the rest of the term off anyway, so the saving is often imaginary. If the tenancy really does end, the honest options are a shorter or rolling deal from the start, or accepting the empty months as the price of a cheaper monthly rate.

Does the landlord have to provide broadband?

No. Broadband is not on the list of things a landlord must supply, so a house with no working line is not a repair issue you can force. What a landlord does control is permission for an installation that involves drilling or work outside, which is worth asking about in writing before you order anything.

What if the house already has a line from last year?

Ask what network it sits on rather than assuming the old provider is your only option. A live line often means the install is already done and a new order is a switch rather than a build, which is faster and sometimes cheaper. Where the previous tenants left an unpaid account, that is theirs, not yours.