Outlying Hostel Connections

 Residents of all College Hostels except for Kings Street, Jesus Lane and Emmanuel Street will be required to provide their own network connection. The College has agreed to subsidise this connection on the following basis:

Each hostel will need one student to volunteer to take out the subscription for a residential broadband connection. This person will be reimbursed the cost of the contract up to a value of £300. Students can arrange for a more expensive broadband plan if they wish, but the additional cost will have to be met by them.

Generally the recommendation is to use Virgin Media broadband due to the distance and line quality of the BT cable infrastructure in the area our hostels are located (particularly Devonshire Road). This line quality will impact the speed and quality of your connection. It should be noted however that some residents have reported favourable performance on the BT provided cables even in the worst area so the customer experience obviously varies.

Please note that if you are arranging a contract using BT telephone cable (i.e. ADSL broadband), you are not required to buy a BT Broadband contract as there are other providers who make use of the BT infrastructure and  may offer a more competitive range of broadband packages. We recommend you only use an Ofcom accredited comparison site to help you choose the right provider. If at all possible you should try and get the opinion on any service used in that location from the previous hostel tenant. Bear in mind everyone's use and service expectation vary.

Most providers will now supply a wireless router as part of their package to enable you to share the connection. If this is not the case,  the College will provide the necessary hardware.  Please contact IT Services to arrange this. Once you have your internet connection installed in your hostel. Sharing the connection is normally straightforward, but if you have any technical difficulties please contact IT Services.

You will need to take a copy of your contract  to  the Accounts Office in Y8 to arrange your rebate.  It would be helpful if you could provide a list of the other residents in the hostel to the Accounts staff when you do this.

If you have any other non-technical questions please contact the Domestic Bursar, preferably by e-mail at director.services@christs.cam.ac.uk .