A fast, reliable internet connection is essential when businesses choose a new office location.
In the search for fast, reliable internet, some businesses are going further than simply choosing a fast broadband provider.
Leased line broadband offers an unrivalled solution for fast internet. With a leased line, you rent a dedicated fibre cable from your internet service provider, so your connection is kept from being slowed down or interrupted by other properties in your area.
What is leased line broadband?
The easiest way to understand leased line broadband is to compare it to a normal business broadband deal.
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, means your internet 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. See how this compares to your current broadband connection with the AquaSwitch 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.
How much does leased line broadband cost?
A typical leased line contract starts at £300 a month and requires a five-year commitment.
So the trade-off required compared to standard fibreoptic broadband comes with the cost and the contract commitment.
Leased line packages must be property-specific because the cost will depend on how far your dedicated cable needs to travel and how much speed you need.
Request bespoke leased line quotes with AquaSwitch today in with our compare business broadband service.
Which broadband providers offer leased line broadband?
According to our in-house broadband experts, here’s a list of the top leased-line broadband providers:
- BT Business
- TalkTalk Business
- Virgin Business Broadband
- Vodafone Business Broadband
What are the advantages of leased line broadband?
Here are the top four advantages of a leased line broadband connection:
Speed. Fibre-optic cables are the fastest way to transmit fixed-line broadband data. On a dedicated line, your connection isn’t slowed by other users. Leased line connections offer speeds up to 10Gbps, which is 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 need to take their cyber security 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.
Downtime SLAs. In a standard broadband package, your provider will typically commit to using their best efforts to restore an internet connection if something goes wrong. In contrast, a leased line contract will commit the provider to a restoration deadline to restore the connection.
FAQs
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 a leased line and business broadband?
You share broadband infrastructure with other nearby properties in a normal business broadband connection. 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.
