UK Students waste £160 per year on Broadband

May 21, 2013 - PRLog -- By surveying 1,928 University students they found out that the average user only uses a fraction of their monthly broadband limits and can over pay by an estimated £160 per year.

The survey asked students how much they paid each month (outside of any promotional periods), what package they purchased and also asked them to monitor their bandwidth for 3 months.

The results showed that 77% of those students asked paid on average £21.99 per month for ‘unlimited’ packages where usage was not capped. Analysing their broadband usage over this period also showed that their average usage was only 32Gb per month.

Meaning that the majority of broadband consumers are overpaying for their broadband and ‘uncapped’ packages were not suitable for the average student.

Andrew Heaps founder of thecomparison.co.uk “Broadband is vital for students to not only communicate but complete important course work and studying, we wanted to research the real cost of student broadband deals.”

Mead recommends “Many students believe they should be on an unlimited or high cap broadband package as they frequently watch movies or download music, but based on our research it simply wasn’t the case, with many students not using more than 30 to 40Gb per month”.

In addition to monitoring bandwidth usage, connection speeds were also analysed to see whether price impacted performance. Findings showed that even with the cheaper £8.50 per month package downloads speeds where the fastest the customers line could handle.

Andrew Heaps concludes “We originally believed that students on an uncapped line could receive higher speeds, but that simply wasn’t the case. Even the cheapest broadband deal available provided the best speed the customer could have, sometimes as high as 20Mb”.

“As broadband becomes a must have utility, like Gas or Electric, students are recommended to continually monitor prices. Broadband providers are offering very attractive packages, with many at half price for the first 6 months. As long as students understand the monthly limits, then they could be saving up to £160 per year by simply changing their package”.

With tuition fees and the cost of living increasing for each year, students should always look to compare broadband and their other bills to help reduce costs.

thecomparison.co.uk provides impartial broadband advice, news and the latest deals through their broadband postcode checker tool.

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