The best time of your life - but watch the minutes

The best time of your life - but watch the minutes

Wind back as little as 10 years and mobile phones on a university campus were an eye-catching rarity. Now, practically every undergraduate has one tucked away in their jacket or bag. But with all those calls to friends and family, bills can quickly mount up and it is a good time for students to consider whether their current tariff offers the best deal.

Some phone companies are targeting undergraduates with so-called 'student tariffs' but these are largely a waste of money, says Anthony Ball of mobile phone price comparison website Onecompare.com. 'There used to be a lot of student tariffs around and they used to be good value. Now there are only a few and they are not the cheapest around.'

Whether or not you are a student, before you pick a tariff you should think carefully about how you use your phone. Would you prefer more texts for your money, or more calls? If you do make a lot of calls, do you tend to make them to the same network or are friends and family on other networks? Is a lower bill more important than a new handset?

One thing has changed recently and that is the emergence of 'Sim-only' deals. These deals generally offer better value than either pay-monthly or pay-as-you-go and, crucially, do not tie users into a long contract. You will not be sent a new handset with the deal; instead you just get a new Sim card to slot into the back of your existing phone.

Nearly all Sim-only deals operate on a monthly rolling contract so you.....continued below

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can change your mind and switch to something else if you find it doesn't suit you.

'These Sim-only deals offer really good value and if you don't like your existing handset you should be able to find a good value top-of-the-range handset on eBay,' says Ernest Doku of mobile phone price comparison website Omio.com.

For students on a budget Ball thinks T-Mobile's Sim-only 'solo' tariffs offers particularly good value. The tariffs start at £15 a month for 350 minutes of calls to any network and 650 text messages. For £20 a month you get 500 minutes of talk time and for £30 a month 1,400 minutes - both tariffs have unlimited texts.

Virgin Mobile also offers what Ball describes as 'quite a good deal'; its Sim-only Liberty tariffs also start at £15 a month. For this you get either 300 minutes and 300 texts or 150 minutes and 1,000 texts. Move up to £20 and you get either 450 minutes and 450 texts or 300 minutes and 2,000 texts.

'The number of minutes of talk time don't stack up against T-mobile's solo tariff but the £20 "texter" deal gives you a whopping 2,000 texts, which is great if you tend to communicate more this way,' he says.

It is also worth checking what the networks offer online, as there can often be better deals there than in the stores. For example Vodafone is currently offering a promotion on Sim-only, which for £20 a month gives subscribers 600 minutes at anytime and unlimited texts. If you want to include internet access you can bolt this on to the tariff for an extra £5 a month.