short term broadband

Hi
I'm going to be in London for several weeks on and off through June/July staying at a house with no broadband. The house has a phone line but assume previous tenant will have terminated it. I have a laptop. Can anyone tell me the best and cheapest way to have broadband access for such a short intermittent time? As I don't want to re-initiate the BT line as I'll only be there for a couple of months on and off, I'm guessing the only possibility is a dongly thing (sorry I've never had anything to do with mobile broadband before so a novice at thsi) Is it possible without a contract.

Thanks for any help.

You can have a short term service, we do quite a lot of them for events etc, but it can work out a little expensive, as you need to pay the ADSL activation and cease charge, the phone line is not so bad as this can normally be re-started for just £6.00, with a monthly contract, but when you add all these bits up it may be better off getting a 3G dongle as there can be purchased on a PAYG service and just topping up the amount of data you need, being in London the signal should be OK, but that will be the limiting factor.

You can get a Wireless Dongle on a Pay as you Go basis, just like a phone.

Check the normal mobile networks for coverage and you can get a dongle with an initial data "included in the cost" . Note that to get a sensible amount of data is not cheap.

You could use a 3 phone on one of their "all you can eat" internet plans - they allow truly unlimited amounts of data although, technically, only the most expensive one allows tethering but if you have a phone with an access point built in (lots of Android ones do) then I dont see how they would know!

Thanks for responses which have given me the leg up to find out more. It seems like a simple question I know, but really I didn't know what the term was to search on so PAYG mobile broadband is what I want.
Can I ask another daftish question now I've got the idea. Can you just walk into say an Orange shop and buy a payg dongle and use it right away without waiting for activation etc?

Thanks again.

Yes.

Thank you.

Some friends of ours moved from the Manchester area to Milton Keynes and it took a fair while for BT to get their act together and transfer the broadband connection.

They managed very well with an O2 dongle.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Thanks for any help.

USB dongles work well for computers - but if you need to get game systems online, then look at the WiFi versions.

Argos sell the Three "MiFi" wireless router on PAYG for £90 and then you top up for usage.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Thanks for any help.

USB dongles work well for computers - but if you need to get game systems online, then look at the WiFi versions.

Argos sell the Three "MiFi" wireless router on PAYG for £90 and then you top up for usage.

Yeah but with gaming the slightly higher ping of 3g becomes a problem; 80-100msec typically on 3g versus 20-30 on an ADSL connection.

In reply to a post by blueacid:

Yeah but with gaming the slightly higher ping of 3g becomes a problem; 80-100msec typically on 3g versus 20-30 on an ADSL connection.

Agreed - sadly a problem with UMTS/HSPA technology - no solution until LTE (4G) is licensed and can be built, UK is really behind in this :-/
Not all games need low latency however - some just need to see the server.