A leased line is a dedicated, fibre connection that provides your business with hyper-fast internet connectivity.
A leased line is the fastest form of fixed line broadband available, offering enormous speeds up to 1Gbps. They’re also dedicated, which means that your business won’t be affected by your neighbours, or by peak times.
Instead of a shared connection, you have your own unique line that connects to your premises to the nearest fibre connection (this is normally either a street cabinet or a telephone exchange).
How does a leased line work?
A leased line works just like any other fibre broadband connection. It transmits a data signal through a pipe from the telephone exchange to your premises. It’s actually fairly simple.
As you can see in the above diagram, the business with the leased line has its own, dedicated connection; whereas the other businesses have a shared connection.
How is a leased line different from regular broadband?
Most businesses and residential addresses have a fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) connection. This type of connection uses fibre to connect the telephone exchange to your local green street cabinet. From the cabinet, a copper cable is used that connects to all the buildings in the vicinity.
This fibre broadband connection provides speeds of around 40-100Mbps. However, because a leased line is a dedicated fibre connection, it can achieve way higher speeds. Up to 1Gbps. These speeds are also much more reliable, as they do not fluctuate with peak usage.
A leased line is also one of the most reliable forms of connectivity. Our leased lines have an uptime of 99.9%, with most of our clients never suffer from a single connectivity issue. Seriously—they’re that reliable.
Who is a leased line for?
A leased line is not the right option for everybody. In fact, they’re fairly uncommon in the small to medium business sector. However, if your business matches any of the following criteria, then a leased line may be a good option for you:
- Premises is far away from cabinet
- No fibre to the cabinet is available
- Over 20 simultaneous internet users
- Heavily reliant on your internet
- You use VoIP with over 30+ users
- No nearby buildings with a fibre connection
- Office in a rural location
Should I choose a leased line?
Every business is different. If you’ve got 10 staff working out of an office in a town or city, then chances are you won’t need a leased line—and you could just upgrade to fibre broadband.
However, if you match any of the above criteria, then a leased line is a good solution. Maybe your office is in the middle of nowhere, or you have lots of users or you’re heavily reliant on a good internet connection?
If you’re unsure, you could always give us a call and we can talk through your business set up and help you make the right decision for your business—no sales talk, no faff.
How much does a leased line cost?
You may be wondering how much all of this ‘dedicated, hyperfast fibre’ costs? Well, it could be less than you think. Admittedly, a leased line is more expensive than ‘regular’ fibre broadband, however they are typically more cost-effective.
With a leased line, you can control your costs. This means that you won’t be paying over the odds for speeds or bandwidth that you don’t use and you can easily add more if you need—it’s like turning a tap.
Another cost saving measure is our voucher scheme, With our Government approved scheme, you could get up to £2,500 off your Bytes Digital leased line installation cost.
