Leased line or full fibre: which to choose?

Fast and efficient internet access is the foundation of almost every facet of business, from e-commerce and marketing to stock control and security. And that’s to name just a few.

If you’re looking for top tier performance and reliability, you essentially have two very good connectivity options. Our Business Full Fibre is Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) broadband with a range of download speeds up to 900 Mbps. It works similarly to the broadband connections we’re most familiar with, in that you share the infrastructure with other users in your area. It’s just much, much quicker.

An Ethernet leased line offers similar levels of performance, but the line is dedicated to you and you alone. That gives it advantages that may be important for some businesses, but not for all. Let’s dig into the details.

What’s available where?

Leased lines can be installed pretty much anywhere, though there may be some disruption during the process.

By contrast, you can only get full fibre where the infrastructure already exists. Openreach has committed to making FTTP available to 25 million homes and businesses by 2026. That means the vast majority of larger metropolitan areas are already covered.

But rural areas lag behind, even if coverage is growing. Unfortunately, rural businesses are often the last to see the benefits of new broadband technology, and that’s as true with full fibre as it was with earlier generations of connectivity.

You can check if your business has access to full fibre broadband here.

So the decision may be made for you. In some areas, a leased line may be the only way to access ultrafast, ultra-reliable business broadband.

High speed is guaranteed

When both FTTP and leased lines are available, things are a little less black and white. Both are exceptionally quick and reassuringly reliable. Our Business Full Fibre broadband is available with download speeds of up to 900 Mbps, though even faster speeds are on their way.

Our leased lines, meanwhile, are delivered directly via 100 MBps or 1 Gbps bearers. That means the top speed is currently a little bit faster than the full fibre equivalent.

In truth, there’s very little to choose between the two when it comes to advertised speeds, but there may be a bigger difference when it comes to the speed you actually achieve.

As we’ve mentioned, FTTP infrastructure is shared and leased lines are not. So with FTTP it’s possible to experience slow downs during periods of peak traffic, when a number of other users are competing for the same bandwidth.

Is this a big deal? Download speeds are so quick with full fibre that even slow downs may make little or no difference to your actual online experience. But if guaranteed speed is important to you, leased lines may have the edge.

What about uploads?

But speed isn’t just about how fast downloads are. In an environment when video calls and cloud computing are becoming the norm, uploads can be equally important, and here leased lines have a definite advantage.

Leased line speeds are symmetrical, which means download and upload speeds are the same. If your download speed is 1 Gbps, your upload speed should be 1 Gbps as well.

Again, this is a function of an uncontended line that only you can use. By contrast, a 900 Mbps full fibre connection may only have upload speeds of around 100 Mbps.

That’s still fast, and again, we shouldn’t overegg this issue. If you’re a small-to-medium sized business with average connectivity needs, 100 Mbps uploads could be more than enough. But for heavy users, symmetrical speeds could be a reason to choose a leased line over FTTP.

Will it be there when we need it?

All businesses are digital businesses to some extent, so connectivity needs to be as available as it is quick.

Both leased lines and full fibre fulfil this requirement, though again to slightly different degrees. In the case of FTTP, the fibre optic cables used to transmit data are a huge step up in reliability from the copper and part copper lines that were integral to earlier broadband iterations like ADSL and FTTC.

Nevertheless, dropouts can happen with FTTP, even if they’re extremely rare. If being offline is not an option, even for small amounts of time, you may want to seek the reassurance of a leased line, which in Zen’s case comes with a standard 99.9% uptime guarantee and a fast fix promise. What’s more, additional resiliency options are available, giving an almost cast iron uptime promise.

Having said that, there is a way to all-but guarantee connectivity with a Zen FTTP line, too. With our Full Fibre Business Pro packages, you get the reassurance of 4G backup, which means the 4G cellular network automatically kicks in if your main connectivity drops out. It might not do everything your fixed FTTP does, but it will keep your business ticking over online until the problem is solved.

So which to choose?

As we’ve seen, a leased line has the edge when it comes to reliability and resilience, so when always-on connectivity is essential it might be the right choice for you.

At the same time, full fibre is also a superb business option, with performance and uptime that will be more than enough for many businesses, and at lower cost.

If you’re still not sure, our business connectivity experts would be happy to talk you through the options. Check out our business full fibre and leased line pages and feel free to get in touch.