When your company internet drops, your business stops. For companies with 15+ staff operating on cloud software, hosted telephony, and remote server access, standard broadband represents a major single point of failure.
Contended Broadband vs Uncontended Leased Lines
Standard FTTC and FTTP business broadband is contended. That means your connection is shared with up to 50 neighbouring businesses and residential homes at the street cabinet. At peak times (typically 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM), your speeds fluctuate, voice calls degrade, and file uploads slow to a crawl.
A Dedicated Leased Line (often delivered via BTnet or CityFibre wholesale) provides a direct, unshared 1:1 fibre pipe directly from your premises to the core carrier exchange. If you pay for 1Gbps, you receive a full 1,000Mbps symmetrical upload and download 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The True Meaning of a 5-Hour Repair SLA
If standard broadband goes down, Openreach’s standard repair window is 48 to 72 working hours. Over a weekend or bank holiday, an outage can leave your team crippled for days.
Dedicated Leased Lines come backed by a legally binding Service Level Agreement (SLA) featuring a guaranteed 5-hour repair commitment with a round-the-clock specialized engineer on-site.