By Kate Solomon on Friday, 3rd September 2010

Back in my day, we didn’t have any of this new fangled technological whathaveyou at university. We had books, paper, quills, typewriters and payphones, and we worked by gas light. There were no mobile phones back then.

Ok, that’s a complete lie. It was 2003, there were totally mobile phones – they were just rubbish and never had any credit on them because we spent all our money on Asda’s own-brand vodka and Panda Pop mixers.

Anyway, those days are well and truly behind us – and University life no longer needs to be a phone-light time of your life. Virgin Media has unveiled a very tasty new deal on the BlackBerry Curve 8520. Ok, so it’s not the most up-to-date of handsets, but unless you have a wealthy benefactor willing to sort you out with an iPhone 4, bear with us.

The deal offers plenty for your pennies – a free BlackBerry Curve 8520, which has a Qwerty keypad so you can tap out lecture notes (or even essays on it, if you’re so inclined) as well as Wi-Fi and a 2-megapixel camera.

The deal also gives you unlimited web, email and BlackBerry Messenger. Minutes are a little more stingy – just 50 a month – but you do get 250 text messages so you can always text home to tell your mother to call you instead.

But the best part is that all this is going to set you back just £12 a month.

I’ll say that again: £12 per month. That’s the equivalent of less than a litre of Asda’s own-brand Vodka. In fact it could be less than that even, because if you can produce a valid NUS card, you’ll enjoy a 15% discount. As if that wasn’t enough, Virgin Media home customers can nab further savings too.

Frankly, despite the 24-month contract, this is a great deal for anyone, student or not. The only question is, can you live without that extra litre of cheap vodka a month?