A line of your own, not a share of the street's
Most business connections share a street cabinet with everyone else nearby, splitting what’s available between all of you. A leased line is different – a dedicated circuit that runs straight to your building and carries nothing but your traffic. The speed you’re quoted is the speed you get, at nine in the morning or three in the afternoon.
That matters when slow isn’t just annoying – it’s the thing standing between your team and the work. If phones, backup or video calls run over your connection all day, you need to know it’ll hold, not hope it will.
What a leased line actually is
Business broadband, even fast full-fibre broadband, shares its capacity with everyone else nearby who’s connected to the same equipment. Most of the time nobody notices. On a busy afternoon, with half the street on a video call, the same connection that flew at nine o’clock can crawl by three.
A leased line doesn’t share anything. It’s built and provisioned for your building alone, so the capacity is yours whether you’re using it or not. That’s why the speed you’re quoted is the speed you get, any hour, any day – not a best guess based on how quiet the street happens to be.
If you’re still weighing up whether you need that, or whether full-fibre broadband already does the job, our guide on leased line, FTTP or FTTC walks through the decision properly. For most businesses broadband is genuinely the right call – see our business internet page for how we help you choose and buy the right line.
Guaranteed both ways
Broadband is built and sold on its download speed, because that’s what streaming and browsing need. A leased line is guaranteed both ways – upload matches download, not a fraction of it.
That matters more than it used to. Hosted phone systems need a steady upward path for every call, not just a fast one for what comes in. Cloud backup pushes data out overnight, often for hours at a time. Video calls send your camera and your voice out continuously, and it’s that outward leg that breaks up first when a line’s under strain.
If your phone system is moving onto your internet connection, or already has, guaranteed upload is the difference between calls that sound like a normal conversation and calls that cut out mid-sentence. Our phone systems page covers what that move looks like in practice.
What happens when it breaks
Every leased line comes with a fix-time commitment written into the contract with your provider – a promise about how quickly a fault gets fixed, not just looked at. That’s a genuinely different thing from a standard broadband fault, where “we’ll look into it” can mean anything from an hour to several days, with nobody accountable for the gap in between.
When something does go wrong, you’re not reporting it into a queue and waiting to hear back. You call us, and our average response time is 15 minutes – a real person working the problem, not a ticket sitting in line while your team stands still.
How long installation takes
A leased line is built to order, not switched on from a cabinet down the road, so it takes longer than broadband to get live – typically several weeks, sometimes a few months, depending on what’s already in the ground near your building. If the route needs new digging, or a landlord’s permission to cross land that isn’t yours, that timescale stretches further.
We’ll give you a realistic install date up front, before you commit to anything, not a vague estimate that slips as the weeks go on. Knowing the date early is what lets you plan around it – a lease renewal, a contract deadline, a house move for the office – instead of finding out how long it takes after you’ve already given notice on something else.
Your existing connection stays live throughout, so there’s no gap between the old line going off and the new one coming on. You only switch over once the new circuit is tested and working.
When not to buy one
A leased line isn’t the right answer for every business, and we’ll tell you plainly when it isn’t.
If you’re a smaller team running mostly email and Microsoft 365, and a short outage is an inconvenience rather than something that costs you real trade, you probably don’t need one. Good business broadband, set up and looked after properly, will do the job for less – and our free connectivity assessment will say so if that’s what we find, rather than talking you into the bigger option regardless.
A leased line earns its cost when downtime is expensive, when your phones or backups depend on a steady upload, or when a client contract obliges you to guarantee uptime. Outside of that, it’s a lot of circuit for a problem you don’t have.
We’d rather say that up front than sign you up and let you find out in month three. A leased line is a genuine investment, and the businesses who get the most from it are the ones who needed it before they bought it – not the ones talked into it because it sounded like the sensible upgrade. If you’re growing fast and expect to need one within the year, that’s worth flagging too, so we can plan the switch before the old connection starts to strain rather than after.
Common questions
What's the actual difference between a leased line and business broadband?
A leased line is a dedicated circuit, built for your building alone, with guaranteed speed both ways and a contractual fix-time commitment. Broadband, even full-fibre broadband, shares capacity with other premises nearby, so the speed you actually get can vary through the day.
How much notice do we need to give before switching?
Because a leased line is built rather than switched on, order it well ahead of when you need it live – ideally several months before any deadline you’re working to, such as a lease renewal or a contract that requires guaranteed uptime.
Does our current connection stay live during installation?
Yes. Your existing line keeps running while the new circuit is built and tested, and you only move over once it’s ready. There’s no forced gap in service.
Can a leased line carry our phone system as well as internet traffic?
Yes – guaranteed upload speed is exactly what makes it a strong fit for hosted phone systems, particularly where several calls run at once. See our phone systems page for how the two fit together.
What's a wayleave, and will we need one?
A wayleave is a landlord’s or third party’s permission to run a cable across land that isn’t yours – a shared car park, other tenants’ space, land between your building and the street. Not every installation needs one, but where it does, it’s usually the step that adds the most time, so we check for it early.
Do we have to replace our broadband as well?
No. Plenty of businesses run a leased line for what matters most and keep broadband as a cheaper backup connection. We’ll help you work out whether that’s worth doing for you.
Can we increase the speed later if we grow?
Usually, yes. Most leased lines are provisioned with room to scale, and increasing the guaranteed speed on an existing circuit is normally far quicker than installing a brand new one. It’s worth telling us your growth plans up front, so the circuit we quote for has room to grow into.
What happens if we move offices?
A leased line is built for one address, so moving means ordering a new circuit for the new building rather than taking the old one with you. Build the lead time into your moving plan early, and keep the old connection running at the current site until the new one is live and tested.
Get a leased line quote
Check what a leased line would cost at your address, then talk it through with someone who’ll tell you honestly whether you need one.
Check what a leased line costs at your address →
Not sure yet? Book a free connectivity assessment and we’ll look at what you’ve got, what you actually need, and which option gets you there.
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Or call us on 01202 237 273 – we’ll give you a straight answer, not a sales pitch.
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