Business Enterprise Partners

Everything you need to know about leased lines and how they can boost business connectivity

Zen Jan 10 2024 5 minutes

Whatever kind of business you are - from large enterprise to small, single to multisite, direct user or reseller of Zen services - you’ve probably heard of leased lines (sometimes called Ethernet). But what are leased lines, and how can they help you? These are the questions that this article aims to answer.

What are leased lines?

A leased line is a type of internet connection that is reserved for just one user – typically a business. Unlike standard broadband connections that are shared with other users (think of multiple users in a location sharing the same wires or infrastructure), leased lines give full access to the whole connection, so there’s no need to worry about slow speeds or unreliable performance.

Leased lines are also symmetrical, which means they offer the same speed for both uploading and downloading data, so data transfers are smooth in both directions. And leased lines also come with a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is a guarantee of the quality and performance of the connection.

How can leased lines boost businesses?

Leased lines have many benefits over standard business broadband connections, including:

Faster speeds: Leased lines from Zen offer speeds of up to 1Gbps, enough to comfortably cover most business needs. And while some full fibre broadband connections also offer download speeds of up to 900Mbps, a leased line offers one key speed advantage: symmetrical bandwidth, which simply means upload speeds as fast as download speeds. That alone is a huge benefit for many businesses, especially those that regularly back up data or work with cloud-based applications.
Greater reliability: Leased lines come with a 99.9% availability SLA (adjustable up to 100% with additional resiliency options). While full fibre connections are also very reliable, these absolute guarantees (and promises of fast fixes in the extremely rare event of failure) provide many businesses that depend on always-on connectivity with the assurances they need.
Scalability: Leased lines are flexible and scalable, which means that available bandwidth can be changed according to business need. Leased line connections can be easily upgraded enabling growing businesses to take the level of service they need today with confidence that it can be scaled up as demands dictate.
Cost effectiveness: Leased lines may seem more expensive than standard broadband connections at first, but they can actually save businesses money in the long run. Leased lines can eliminate the need for multiple connections as they can support different types of services and devices, such as voice, video and data. Leased lines also reduce the costs of downtime and lost productivity, as they provide a more reliable internet connection.
Quality of Service: Leased lines allow for different types of traffic to be prioritised, such as voice, video or data, according to business needs. This means that the most important applications and services can get the best performance and quality without being affected by other traffic on the network.
Future proof: Leased lines are compatible with the latest technologies and innovations, such as cloud computing and cloud communications. They provide a perfect platform for powerful unified communications and business in a connected world.
A rock-solid network: For businesses wanting to connect multiple offices/locations, there’s nothing quite like the guaranteed performance and symmetrical connectivity of a leased line. From MPLS to SD-WAN, connecting branches or remote workers, leased lines enable better business connectivity, collaboration, communication and more.
Customer satisfaction: Leased lines can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, as they enable faster and more reliable services like online ordering, payment processing and customer support. They allow effective communication with customers, using high quality voice and video calls, and of course because they keep the business and its people better connected that also means greater levels of availability and responsiveness to customer needs.

Zen: A trusted leased lines partner

If you’ve been convinced by the benefits of leased lines, the next question you might ask is ‘why Zen?’. After all, leased line connections are all the same, right?

But that’s where the Zen difference comes in. Because we’re really not like other providers. For a start, we’re an independent, award-winning business that puts people first. We’re not driven by profit or shareholders, but by our values and our vision. And that vision couldn’t be any clearer: Happy Staff, Happy Customers and Happy Suppliers.

In other words, when you choose Zen, your happiness is our goal. And you’ll experience that difference as you deal with us. We want to help you find the right solution for your business (or your customers’ businesses). We’re committed to providing you with the best least line solutions available. We have a range of options to suit your unique needs and we want to help you get connected quickly and seamlessly.

Discover the Zen advantage

Expanded on-net footprint: We’ve expanded our UK on-net footprint by 55%, bringing Zen’s infrastructure to more places than ever for better pricing and response times, as well as the best quality of service.
Faster MTTP: Our Mean Time to Provision (MTTP) is 21% faster than the industry average, which demonstrates our ability to get you connected quickly, minimising downtime and disruption.
Higher on-time delivery: Our on-time delivery rate of 90.1% is higher than the industry average, which means we can deliver leased line solutions on time and according to your specifications.
Our greatest asset: It may sound a tad cliched, but at Zen our greatest asset is our people. They are highly skilled and motivated by ensuring the best possible outcome for you. When we say that the hard sell is out of the question, we really mean it. For us, it’s all about matching you with the perfect solution to carry your business forward.