How much does a leased line Cost?
If you have been looking into getting leased line costs you will probably be aware the quotes can vary dramatically. A 100Mb BTnet Leased line may cost £500 per month, whereas A 100Mb Virgin Leased Line at the same location may cost £250. It can be a confusing marketplace & we are going to help you understand why & more importantly how to avoid paying more than what you need to.
Why do the prices vary so much? There are a few factors that impact a leased line cost, the main two are the speed & location.
Let’s start with the speed of the line. Leased Lines range from 10Mb to 10Gb. When we first started doing leased line comparisons in 2011 most people that used our comparison were looking for a 10Mb, now the majority are looking for 100Mb Leased line quotes.This shows us companies require high speeds on their line & the upload speed has become a key focus for many.
How much more affordable will still always come down to your location. Major cities like London & Manchester have a great infrastructure & have been leading the way with connectivity options for some time. For consumers this means leased line costs in areas like this can start from as little as £149 per month. It will all depend on how close you are to any providers PoP (point of presence) the closer you are the less a leased line will cost you.
The final thing that has an impact on the cost of a leased line is weather its a managed services line or wires only. If its wires only you are renting the physical fibre optic cable and would need to supply all the equipment and do the monitoring of the line. Most people opt for a managed line as the line is a dedicated Ethernet connection giving you internet access and the supplier fits a managed router & monitors the line for faults 24/7.
How much does a BT leased line cost?
BTnet Leased Lines were the market leaders in leased lines to start. BT Business owned most of the fibre optic cables in the UK & their connection with Openreach used to also mean they could fast track some installs which put them at a huge advantage.
That has changed now & Ofcom work closely with providers to ensure lead time targets are being met by all – Openreach cannot treat any providers better than any other. Most providers will use BT or Virgin Media Fibre to deliver their leased line. All this means is they use the existing Ethernet cables which are owned by BT or Virgin & then they connect all the equipment that makes the internet run on that line.
BTNet leased lines tend to be quite a bit more expensive than their competitors – the only reason we have found for this is simply because they are BT & they can. The brand has been the biggest in UK telecoms for decades so it’s the first provider many people will obtain a quote from.
Virgin Media are certainly giving them some tough competition now & re-sellers like Aspire & Vaioni can often get much cheaper pricing than you would from the two telecoms giants.
How much is a 100Mb Leased Line?
As it stands right now the cheapest you will find a 100Mb Leased line for is about £195 per month. Other provider sites will tell you what costs are, but they are usually basing that on the average in the big inner-city areas to make their pricing look more attractive. The average leased line cost across all our customers that have signed up to a new leased line is closer to £300 a month. The most expensive was just under £600 in a rural area near Darlington.
As with your home broadband & phones the best way to ensure you’re getting the best deal is to run a comparison. That can be tricky online as most of the top ranked “comparison” sites for leased lines are providers pretending to be a comparison site. Daisy Communications probably runs the most successful one. But all they do is compare the tail circuit which every provider does anyway – then add on their margins.
Ultimately if you compare with them you are only seeing the leased line cost they get from the market – not actually comparing the market. We would love to help you get a genuine comparison. Just Click Here & we will contact you to confirm your details & then match you up with the 3 top providers in your area.
But I can get Virgin Fibre Broadband connection which gives me 300Mb for £60 per month! Why would I pay a few hundred a month for a leased line? If we had a £1 for each time we were asked that we would have all retired by now! It’s a very valid question though so to understand we will look at both & try to help you see which option suits you best.
Which is better leased line or broadband?
Leased Line is the better product for most businesses; however, fibre broadband can be perfect for many smaller businesses or businesses who have no reliance on using the internet.
Let’s start by looking at the speeds – I’ll focus on the market leader which is currently Virgins 300Mb Fibre Broadband. 300Mb for £60 per month sounds great right? It would be if that’s the speed you always got. But like most broadband you rarely get the speed advertised.
That being said I am currently using it for the home office & in the past year have had half a dozen outages but generally been a pretty good service, the outages have never lasted more than a few hours so it’s something I can put up with for the home office. I’m based in a good connectivity location & have my laptop connected via an Ethernet cable to give the best connection & this is the speed I just got when testing which you can do here–
Not quite the 300Mb I took out but a good speed nonetheless & it fits what I need to do when working from home – which is mainly checking a few e-mails, uploading content & browsing.
However, many businesses don’t just have one person working at a home office – they have multiple departments using business cloud applications like office 365, Salesforce & VoIP phones that all rely on the internet. So, if the connection goes down for a few hours that would have much more of an impact & loss of revenue than it would for me working from home.
Leased Line is better than broadband because it comes with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which covers:
- Line Uptime – This will always be above 99.95% but varies for each provider.
- Fix Time – Usually 4-6 hours but again it varies for providers. Business Broadband internet connections can be out for days or weeks at a time – leased lines ensures this never happens.
- Symmetrical speeds – your upload & download time will always be the same
- Bandwidth Guarantee – You will always get the speed you paid for
- 1:1 contention – Unlike broadband no one else will ever share your line
Both leased lines & broadband serve a purpose but for any internet reliant business who needs a stable connection with fast uploads – a leased line is the only logical choice. Whatever service you feel is best we would love to help you get broadband or leased line quotes – just follow the links & we will do all the work!
