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Leased line broadband
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Leased line broadband: Dedicated internet access for your business
Welcome to our leased line broadband page. Leased line broadband offers an unrivalled solution for fast internet, and here are some quick links to help you understand the pros and cons of leased line broadband and compare the best deals around:
What to look for when comparing leased line broadband?
Comparing leased line broadband packages can be confusing. In this article, we’ve done our best to give you all the information you need to decide if leased line broadband is the right option for your company.
If leased line broadband is the right option for your business, several broadband providers offer this service, so choosing the right one is the next challenge. Here are the key factors to look out for when comparing leased line broadband packages:
Location dependency
To supply a leased line broadband service, your provider must have high-capacity data networks near your property. Leased line providers use different networks, meaning only some can provide a service at your location, and others will need to charge additional fees to install a longer dedicated fibre line.
Contract length and pricing
Leased line broadband packages commit your business to a longer term than the typical business broadband deal. If you require a contract that is less than five years, there may be significant upfront installation costs that you’ll need to pay.
Bespoke quoting
Typically, providers offer standardised pricing for a leased line service of 1Gbps or less but will give bespoke quotes for faster speeds. It’s important to remember that leased line services often require laying new data cables to your property, so your quote will depend on assessing the costs involved in installing your dedicated line.
Compare leased line broadband today
It’s fair to say that choosing a leased line broadband package is complicated. Our independent broadband experts are here to help you through each step of the decision-making process.
Simply enter the address details of your property into our tool below, and our business broadband specialists will help you find the right network and internet solutions for your business.
The benefits of leased line broadband
Here are the top three reasons large businesses choose a leased line broadband service.
Unparalleled speed
On a dedicated fibre line, other companies or homes don’t slow your connection. Leased line connections offer speeds up to 10Gbps, 10x faster than the best full-fibre package.
Security
A dedicated line means no other properties send or receive data over your fibre optic cable. This exclusivity is a significant advantage to businesses that take cybersecurity seriously.
Reliability
The simplicity of a single dedicated fibre optic cable has a massive advantage in reliability. Simply put, by avoiding shared infrastructure there is less to go wrong.
Which business providers offer leased line broadband?
Here’s our summary of the top leased line broadband providers in the UK:
**Pricing and guarantees offered as of 14 September 2023.
Virgin Media Leased Line Broadband
Virgin Media has a leased line broadband product offering a 99.995% uptime guarantee and a 6-hour fault response 24/7.
Virgin Media’s leased line products start at £185 per month.
BT Leased Line Broadband
BT offer a leased line product connecting your business directly to their Openreach fibre network.
BT leased line products start at £195 per month for a 60-month contract.
More on BT Business broadband
Hyperoptic Leased Line Broadband
Hyperoptic broadband is an emerging leased line network provider rapidly expanding across UK cities.
Hyperoptic offers a cheap dedicated fibre product starting at £220 per month for a 24-month contract.
More on Hyperoptic Business Broadband
Key features of leased line broadband
Here are the key features of a leased line broadband connection, making it the best option for larger businesses.
No throttling at peak times
Throttling is a practice used by internet service providers to slow down the speed of their customers’ internet to manage network congestion during peak times. Unlike other tethered broadband services, throttling is not a problem because you’re not sharing the connection with other properties.
Huge bandwidth
A leased line broadband connection offers speeds up to 10Gbps, 10 times faster than the next best broadband connection. The speed provided by a leased line allows an entire office of people to simultaneously be using the internet without experiencing any lag or delay.
Symmetrical uploads and downloads
Unlike full-fibre broadband, a leased line fibre cable offers the same speed for both uploads and downloads. Fast upload speeds will benefit companies doing lots of work in the cloud and who need to regularly upload data-intensive files.
Reliable and secure
A big benefit of leased line broadband is its simplicity. With a single dedicated fibre optic cable, there is much less to go wrong. Leased line broadband providers typically guarantee 99.995% uptime. It’s also much more difficult to intercept data transmission, making it more secure.
What is leased line broadband?
The easiest way to understand leased line broadband is to compare it to a normal business broadband connection.
With normal broadband, your property will share the cables connecting your local street to the nearest internet exchange. In times of peak internet usage, these cables can become congested, slowing down the internet for everyone.
Leased line broadband, in contrast, uses a dedicated fibre cable all the way from your premises to the exchange. It’s like avoiding rush-hour traffic by building your own motorway. A leased line broadband connection can offer speeds up to an unimaginable 10Gbps.
For context, the fastest speed offered on home broadband deals is Gigabit internet, with speeds of 1Gbps. See how this compares to your current broadband connection with our speed test.
How does leased line broadband work?
The biggest advantage of leased line broadband is its simplicity. A business broadband provider will supply your business with a dedicated fibre optic cable from an office to their local exchange.
When you upload or download data from the internet, it’ll travel at the speed of light through your dedicated cable without interference from other properties or the local infrastructure required to aggregate the internet requests of all the other properties in your area.
Leased line pricing
There’s no getting away from it: leased line broadband is much more expensive than other business broadband services.
A typical leased line broadband contract will commit your business to a monthly cost of 3 to 5 years.
How much does leased line broadband cost?
A basic leased line contract starts at £300 a month and requires a five-year commitment. This is for the slowest speed, and the cost rises for faster speeds.
So, the trade-off required compared to standard fibreoptic broadband comes with the cost and the contract commitment.
Leased line packages are location-dependent because the cost will depend on how far your dedicated cable travels and how much speed you need. The cost of leased line broadband depends on:
- Location – How far your dedicated cable need to travel to connect with your ISP.
- Bandwidth – The contracted speed of the connection.
- Contract Length – The number of months you agree to rent the leased line.
- Resilience Options – Whether you need (and are willing to pay for) a backup connection.
- Security products – Whether you buy firewall and anti-DDOS protection from your lease line provider.
Additional leased line broadband costs
Leased line broadband packages offered in the UK are invariably subject to an initial survey. Your provider may decide that installing your dedicated line is too onerous; in this case, they will inform you that they cannot fulfil the contract at the advertised price and instead offer a more expensive alternative.
Leased line installation costs
A typical leased line broadband product requires significant installation work by your provider. In a typical 60-month leased line broadband contract, the provider will not charge an upfront installation cost, instead including this within the monthly cost of your overall package.
Some providers offer shorter packages that include an initial installation fee at the start of your contract.
Enter the postcode of your property in the box below to compare leased line broadband costs.
Who would benefit from leased line broadband
Leased line broadband easily offers the fastest and most reliable broadband currently available in the UK. Theoretically, anyone could benefit from these speeds, but except for the most ardent gamers, leased line broadband is needlessly expensive for domestic users.
Businesses and other organisations with over 20 simultaneous internet users are those that benefit most from leased line broadband, specifically those that:
- Work with the transfer of data-heavy information
- Use multiple cloud-based applications
- Have latency-sensitive applications
- Cannot suffer any connection downtime
- Have multiple Wi-Fi router spots serving a large building
- Need the most robust data security
Installation and support for a leased line connection
Leased line business internet has huge advantages in higher speeds, lower latency and higher security compared with other options for business broadband.
Unfortunately, the installation process for laying a dedicated fibre cable to your business can be lengthy and expensive.
It’s also important to consider landlord consent before proceeding with a leased line installation. Leased line business connections require a new cable being dug into the ground around your property. Ensure you’ve got the “okay” from your property owner before signing a leased line agreement.
The installation process
Once you’ve signed up with a leased line provider, here are the four steps to getting your new broadband connection live:
- Site survey – A local engineer will attend your commercial property to review the work required to lay a dedicated fibre cable from your property to your provider’s high-capacity data network. It will be necessary to show the engineer where the fibre line will terminate in your property.
- Permissions and wayleave agreements – In a lot of cases, your lease line provider can install your broadband cables using existing fibre ducts, avoiding the need to dig trenches for your fibre cabling. However, if this work is required, it will be necessary for your provider to obtain the permissions before proceeding.
- On-site works – When all the relevant permissions have been received, your provider will let you know a date for the on-site work to be completed. Access to your property will be required on this date of their work.
- Final testing and go-live – Following the successful completion of the works, your leased line provider will test the new line before scheduling a go-live date.
How long does leased line broadband installation take?
Leased line broadband installation can take between 30 and 90 days. The key determination is how close your property is to existing high-capacity data network infrastructure operated by your internet service provider.
If digging up roads to install your cables is necessary, it will require council permission, slowing down the entire process. Your leased line provider will estimate the length of the entire process (and any unforeseen costs) as part of their initial site survey.
What is the uptime guarantee for Leased Line broadband?
An uptime guarantee is a type of service level agreement offered by leased line providers guaranteeing the availability of your connection. A typical leased line uptime guarantee is 99.995%. This means that your connection will be unavailable for less than 2 minutes on average per month.
We recommend checking the uptime guarantee offered by your leased line provider when comparing packages.
A leased line business package will also offer an SLA on fault response time if something goes wrong.
Leased line broadband and the security measure you need to undertake
Leased line broadband connection has a great natural security advantage – there are no other users on your fibre cables, reducing the risk of data breach. That being said, leased line broadband still needs to be used in conjunction with other security measures.
Happily, most leased line broadband providers also offer these security measures as part of their enterprise broadband packages.
Firewall
A firewall is a network security service that monitors traffic using your leased line broadband connection. It allows or blocks traffic based upon a defined set of rules and establishes a barrier between the internal networks of your business and all other internet traffic.
Anti-DDOS protection
DDOS stands for Distribution-Denial-of-Service, a cyber security threat where a network is disrupted by a flood of internet traffic. Anti-DDOS protection offered by leased line providers monitors traffic and diverts malicious traffic in a DDOS attack attempt.
Leased line broadband – FAQs
Leased line broadband is the best connectivity option for large businesses, but it comes at a price. Here are the key questions business owners ask when considering a leased line broadband connection.
Is a leased line the same as Dedicated Internet Access (DIA)?
Dedicated Internet Access is a general term for having a dedicated fibre optic cable from your premises to a local exchange.
A leased line broadband connection is a way of achieving Dedicated Internet Access for your business. In a leased line broadband agreement, you hire your dedicated fibre optic cable from your internet service provider.
What’s the difference between leased line and business broadband?
In a normal business fibre broadband connection, you share broadband infrastructure with nearby properties. The connection of the properties on your street is aggregating before making its way to a local internet exchange.
By contrast, in a leased line broadband connection, your business gets a dedicated fibre optic cable directly connecting your property to the local exchange.
Can I upgrade my leased line broadband bandwidth as my business grows?
Yes, upgrading the bandwidth of your leased line broadband connection is generally possible as your business’s connectivity requirements change. However, this depends on whether your internet service provider has capacity on your bearer line.
Is leased line broadband more secure than regular broadband?
Yes, leased line broadband has a natural security advantage over other fibreoptic broadband connections. The cable used by your business to the exchange of your provider isn’t shared by others, reducing the risk of data breaches.
It’s important to remember that a leased line broadband connection should be paired with a firewall and other internet security features. See our section above on leased line broadband security features.
What happens if I face technical issues with my leased line connection?
Leased line broadband is generally the most reliable connection option for business. Leased line providers typically guarantee 99.995% of uptime as part of their SLAs.
If a problem does occur, your provider will be on hand to fix any technical issues with your connection. Leased line connections are generally monitored by your business broadband provider to proactively identify and start working on fixing any issues.
Most leased line broadband providers further offer 5 or 6-hour fault response times.
How do I start with leased line broadband for my business?
The first step to getting leased line broadband is to understand the speed requirements of your business.
Leased line providers typically offer “off-the-shelf” leased line broadband packages at a standardised price, offering between 100Mbps and 1Gbps. If your business needs higher speeds, collecting bespoke quotes from providers will be necessary.
We recommend talking to our business broadband experts to discuss your options. We work with a panel of leased line broadband providers to get you the best deal. Start by simply entering your postcode below.