Full Fibre vs Ethernet leased line: What’s the difference, and which is right for your business?

If you’ve been considering your business broadband lately, you’ve no doubt come across two options that – on the face of it – seem to offer very similar (excellent) levels of connectivity.

Both full fibre and leased lines provide levels of speed, performance and reliability that can far exceed those of traditional business broadband, and both would appear to be safe choices.

So what is the difference between these two technologies, and how can you better understand which is right for your business? Let’s take a look.

Coverage

If you can only get one or the other to your address, that will obviously make your choice much easier, so coverage seems like a good place to start.

Full Fibre broadband coverage is increasing all the time. As of January 2024, fibre to the premises technology was available to just over 60% properties in the UK. That’s a marked increase from just a few short years ago when full fibre was very much a niche product.

However, it’s worth delving into those numbers a little more. Because full fibre tends to have better availability in some areas than others. For example, in urban and larger metropolitan areas, coverage often exceeds 90%. And it doesn’t take a genius therefore to recognise that coverage in other areas must be much lower in order to maintain that 60% average.

Think rural areas and, perhaps more importantly for businesses, out-of-town industrial estates. If you’re looking for the best business broadband in these areas, when it comes to full fibre you may be out of luck, at least for the time being.

The benefit of leased lines here is obvious. They can be installed pretty much anywhere, for exceptional business broadband connectivity in many more locations throughout the UK.

Speed

The headline feature of full fibre broadband – at least when compared to older forms of broadband like ADSL and fibre to the cabinet – is speed.

Many providers, including Zen, now offer full fibre download speeds up to 900Mbps. That’s an astronomical leap from the 67Mbps broadband speeds that we used to consider fast. And a 900Mbps connection may be more than enough to cover the needs of many businesses.

But consider this. Zen’s leased line connections offer speeds up to 1Gbps. Admittedly, that isn’t too much faster than the 900Mbps that full fibre offers. But have you ever considered the fact that most full fibre connections are asymmetrical, and what that might mean for your business?

With asymmetrical connections, download speeds far exceed upload speeds. So, for that 900Mbps example, the upload speeds might sit at around 100Mbps. That’s not to be sniffed at but consider how many modern businesses operate. In many instances that upload speed might simply not be enough.

Most businesses tend to operate in the cloud to one extent or another. From regular file backups to cloud-based services and applications, and even regular video calling, the need for fast upload speeds can often exceed the requirement for rapid downloads.

If your business is working with remote storage and applications, leased lines offer a key advantage: symmetrical bandwidth.

And, unsurprisingly, symmetrical connections do what asymmetrical connections don’t: they give you upload speeds at the same level as your downloads. So, a 1Gbps leased line connection would give you a full gigabit in each direction.

Reliability and availability

Most of the marketing material you’ve read about full fibre has probably made a big deal of its reliability compared to traditional broadband. And those claims are absolutely true.

Without old-fashioned and unreliable copper wires in the mix, the 100% fibre optic technology used in full fibre does indeed make broadband connections more reliable than ever.

For many businesses, being pretty certain that they’ll rarely if ever encounter any issues with their connection is more than enough. But what if it isn’t?

What if you need guaranteed availability? What if you need fix times that surpass those on a standard business broadband connection?

Businesses that rely on being ‘always on’ can take comfort in the SLAs that leased lines provide. A 99.9% (as standard) availability guarantee is backed up by rapid response should problems be encountered. And additional resilience options can help to take those uptime guarantees to 100%.

When connectivity is business-critical, only one type of connection can give the absolute peace of mind that businesses need.

Guaranteed performance

Most of the time, the performance of full fibre and leased line broadband is similarly excellent. But what about when it isn’t?

When you choose a leased line, the connection is yours and yours alone. It is exclusive to your business, not usable or accessible by anyone else. Standard broadband connections – including full fibre – use a shared infrastructure, and that means you may, for example, be sharing the wires with other businesses and residential users in your location.

At quiet times this might not be an issue, but what happens at peak times, when everyone in your location is maxing out their internet connection? The reality is that congestion and slowdown are rare, and we do our best as a provider to keep capacity high enough for all our users.

But occasionally slowdown does happen. Except, with a leased line, it doesn’t. Because your line belongs to you, and whatever your neighbours are doing with their connections makes no difference to yours. When guaranteed performance is a must, there’s only one type of connectivity that, well, guarantees it.

Ready to find out more?

For many businesses, a full fibre broadband connection will more than suffice. If you’re after the best standard business broadband connection, enter your postcode here and see what’s available.

However, many businesses don’t have access to full fibre broadband, and even if they do, perhaps they want more. To find out more about the ultimate in business connectivity – leased lines – follow this link.

Are you a Zen partner or reseller?

You can offer Zen’s award-winning full fibre broadband and Ethernet leased lines to your customers. Find out more.