Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing – and of course a very important resource when you’re a student as well. Not only does it give you access to a lot of information while you’re studying, but it helps you to keep in touch with family and friends cheaply, and of course then there are all the other useful bits of information you can find there like where the cheap places to shop are, discounts that are available for students, and of course articles like this one which help you to know how to get things like internet access cheaply!
So how can you get cheap internet access? Well the first thing to do is to look at where you’re going to be living and accessing the internet from, if you’re lodging with a family, they may already have internet access and may be quite happy for you to piggyback on their network, so it’s worth a cheeky ask, but do it in a nice way or they might say no. If you’re living in a shared house that has a landline telephone in place, then it’s probably worth you all clubbing together to pay for one wireless connection rather than each having your own dongle, particularly if there’s a few of you.
If you’re in halls, then the first thing to do is find out what is available, some halls actually provide free wifi that you can link into. If they don’t, then many of the mobile phone networks now offer internet through the use of simple Bluetooth dongles where you pay a monthly fee just as you would if you had internet access through a landline.
Of course there are other options too – many places such as McDonalds now offer free internet access to their customers, and some town centres even have free wifi in place so that you can sit on a bench in the town and surf the net now. You can find out about free hotspots on sites like these:
http://free-hotspot.com/ and http://www.hotspot-locations.com/ and also your college or university may be able to offer you some information on what’s available in this nature locally too.
Of course, failing all of these options, there is the local library or the college’s own systems that you can use. It’s worth remembering however that in most library and collage set ups you are limited to a maximum amount of time on the computer for free, and certain sites or types of site may well be blocked, and that other sites which are still accessible to you may not give you full access because you’re coming in from a public computer.
