The short answer: Most small offices are well served by full fibre (FTTP) or SoGEA broadband, which cost tens of pounds a month and usually install in a single engineer visit. A leased line costs hundreds of pounds a month and takes weeks or months to install, but it gives you bandwidth nobody else shares, the same speed up and down, and a service level agreement with fix times measured in hours rather than days. Choose a leased line when losing the connection would stop the business, when you upload a lot, or when many people and phone calls depend on one line.
In this guide:
- Leased line vs broadband at a glance
- Contention: shared or dedicated?
- Symmetrical speed and why upload matters
- SLAs and fix times
- Installation lead times and construction charges
- Cost compared
- Leased line vs FTTP: both fibre, so what is different?
- Which does your business need?
- Backup: the part most comparisons leave out
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources
Leased line vs broadband at a glance
Business broadband now comes in two main forms: SoGEA, which is fibre to the street cabinet with copper for the last stretch, and full fibre (FTTP), which is fibre all the way to your building. A leased line is a dedicated fibre just for your business. Here is how they compare.
| SoGEA broadband | Full fibre (FTTP) | Leased line | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it reaches you | Fibre to the street cabinet, copper to your building | Fibre to your building, shared with the surrounding area | A single fibre to your building, just for you |
| Top download speed | Up to 80 Mbps | Up to 1.8 Gbps | Up to 10 Gbps (the range we supply) |
| Upload speed | Up to 20 Mbps | 220 Mbps on a 1 Gbps business line | The same as download |
| At busy times | Can slow at peak times | Can slow at peak times | No slowdown |
| Typical fix time | Broadband repair terms | Next working day | 5 hours or less |
| Typical installation | Usually one engineer visit | Usually one engineer visit where available | Often 45 to 90 working days |
| Monthly price, ex VAT | £42.99 (our SoGEA 80) | From £45.99 (ours) | From £200 (ours) |
Speeds from ISPreview reports on Openreach’s FTTC and SoGEA and full fibre tiers. Fix times as described by Openreach. Leased line installation time from Selectra. Prices are our own.
Contention: shared or dedicated?
Contention simply means sharing. On broadband, the network capacity serving your area is shared between many premises, so speeds can dip when lots of people are online at once. Openreach describes full fibre as a shared connection with the surrounding area that can experience speed throttling during peak traffic periods. SoGEA shares capacity in the same way, through the street cabinet.
A leased line is uncontended. Openreach describes its Ethernet Access Direct product as replacing the default shared fibre with a single point to point fibre cable to your site, so the bandwidth is not shared with the local area. If you buy 500 Mbps, you have 500 Mbps at 9am on a Monday, at lunchtime and at the end of the day.
For a small team on email, web and Microsoft 365, contention is rarely noticeable. It starts to matter when everyone relies on the connection at the same moment: video calls across the office, a cloud phone system, card payments and bookings, or remote staff connecting into office systems.
Symmetrical speed and why upload matters
Broadband is built for downloading. According to ISPreview, Openreach’s top FTTC and SoGEA tier is 80 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. Its 1 Gbps full fibre tier uploads at 115 Mbps on home lines and 220 Mbps on business lines, and its 1.8 Gbps tier uploads at 120 Mbps. A leased line is symmetrical: a 1 Gbps line uploads at 1 Gbps.
Upload is what your business sends: cloud backups, files saved to SharePoint or OneDrive, video from your end of every call, CCTV viewed off site and remote desktop sessions. Here is how long a 50 GB backup takes on each connection:
| Connection | Upload speed | Time to upload 50 GB |
|---|---|---|
| SoGEA 80 | 20 Mbps | About 5 hours 33 minutes |
| Full fibre 1 Gbps, home line | 115 Mbps | About 58 minutes |
| Leased line 100 Mbps | 100 Mbps | About 1 hour 7 minutes |
| Full fibre 1 Gbps, business line | 220 Mbps | About 30 minutes |
| Leased line 1 Gbps | 1 Gbps | About 7 minutes |
Our own arithmetic at each connection’s full upload speed, treating 1 GB as 1,000 MB, before network overheads. Try your own files with our upload and download time calculator.
Notice that a 100 Mbps leased line uploads more slowly than 1 Gbps business full fibre on paper. Raw speed alone is rarely the reason to choose a leased line. The reasons are that the speed is guaranteed at every hour of the day, and that faults are fixed faster.
Symmetric full fibre is also starting to appear. In 2024 Openreach said it planned to launch symmetric 1 Gbps FTTP in selected Project Gigabit areas from April 2025, according to ISPreview, so it is worth asking what is available at your address. It remains a shared broadband service with broadband repair terms.
SLAs and fix times
This is the difference that matters most when something goes wrong. Openreach describes the service level on its Ethernet Access Direct lines as typically a 5 hour fix or less, depending on the product. For full fibre it says typically next working day, with no resilience built in.
Leased line repairs are also regulated. Ofcom requires Openreach to repair 94% of faults on relevant Ethernet and dark fibre products within the SLA time, measured over a year, in the areas its quality of service rules cover. Ofcom kept that standard in its October 2023 statement.
In practice, a broadband fault reported on a Monday morning can leave the office offline until Tuesday. On a leased line, the target is the same day. Whoever you buy from, ask for the SLA in writing, including whether it covers evenings and weekends and what compensation applies if a fix time is missed.
Installation lead times and construction charges
Where full fibre or SoGEA is already available, installation is usually a single engineer visit. A leased line is closer to a small construction project, because a new fibre has to be built into your building.
BT says a new BTnet leased line can take up to 70 working days, depending on the survey. Selectra puts a typical EAD installation at 45 to 90 working days on a site with fibre already in the street, and 6 to 9 months for some rural sites and business parks. Where no new infrastructure is needed, Beaming says activation can come within a 30 day target.
Excess construction charges
If reaching your building needs new ducts, poles, a longer fibre run or roadworks, the carrier can pass on excess construction charges, or ECCs. On new Openreach EAD lines, every order carries a fixed ECC fee, which rose from £638 to £708 excluding VAT on 1 October 2025 and sits within the connection price, according to ISPreview. That fee funds an allowance: Openreach absorbs construction costs up to a threshold and bills the rest. In March 2026 it told providers that threshold was rising from £2,800 to £3,680 excluding VAT, ISPreview reported.
Selectra says ECCs are usually nil in a city centre with fibre in the street, but can reach £15,000 to £50,000 on remote or fibre-poor sites. Ask for a written ECC assessment, and how any charge found after the survey will be handled, before you sign.
Planning around the lead time
- Moving office? Order the leased line as soon as you have the address, and arrange broadband or 4G or 5G for day one.
- Contract ending? Start well before your current contract ends, so you do not pay for two lines for months or end up with a gap.
Beaming names roadworks that need local authority permission, and wayleave or planning issues with landlords and neighbours, as common causes of delay.
Cost compared
| Connection | Monthly price, ex VAT | Source |
|---|---|---|
| SoGEA 80 broadband | £42.99 | ATS Connection |
| Full fibre broadband | From £45.99 | ATS Connection |
| 1 Gbps business full fibre | £30 to £50 | Selectra |
| 100 Mbps leased line | £200 to £400 | Selectra |
| 1 Gbps leased line | £350 to £700 | Selectra |
| Business leased lines | From £200 | ATS Connection |
Selectra’s leased line prices are for a 36 month contract, before any excess construction charges. Ours start from 12 month agreements, with a static IP included, and every line is priced for your address after a survey.
Selectra puts the gap between 1 Gbps business full fibre and a 1 Gbps leased line at roughly £300 a month, or £3,600 a year. The useful question is not which is cheaper, but what a day without the internet costs your business compared with that difference. For prices by speed, installation charges and contract lengths, our leased line cost guide goes into the numbers in detail.
Leased line vs FTTP: both fibre, so what is different?
Full fibre and a leased line both bring fibre into your building, which is why they are easy to confuse. The difference is in how the fibre is used and what the provider promises. Based on how Openreach describes its own products:
| Full fibre (FTTP) | Leased line (Ethernet) | |
|---|---|---|
| Connection | Shared with the surrounding area | A single point to point fibre to your site |
| At peak times | Can experience speed throttling | Bandwidth dedicated to you |
| Latency | Variable, usually no guarantees | Guaranteed ultra-low latency |
| Service level | Typically next working day | Typically a 5 hour fix or less |
| Resilience | None | Diverse routing available |
| Openreach says it typically suits | Homes and small businesses of up to five employees with low data traffic | Medium to large businesses with connectivity-critical needs |
So a leased line vs FTTP decision is rarely about headline speed. Full fibre is the better buy for many small offices. A leased line earns its cost when the connection is critical to how the business runs.
Which does your business need?
SoGEA broadband suits you if
- Full fibre has not reached your address yet.
- You are a small team working mainly on email, web and Microsoft 365.
- You want to move off the old phone line ahead of the 2027 switch-off at the lowest cost.
Full fibre suits you if
- It is available at your address.
- You want fast downloads and better uploads than SoGEA for a modest monthly price.
- A next working day fix would be acceptable, especially with a mobile backup in place.
A leased line suits you if
- Losing the internet would stop the business, not just slow it down.
- Your phones run over the internet, as most business phones will once the old phone network closes. Our guide to the 2027 switch-off explains the deadline.
- You upload a lot every day, or many people share the connection.
- You link several sites or host systems that others connect to.
- You need speeds and fix times in writing, not broadband terms.
Many businesses land in between, and full fibre with a 4G or 5G backup is a common middle ground. Our business broadband page sets out every option, and our guide to EFM covers the copper alternative to a fibre leased line.
Backup: the part most comparisons leave out
Whichever you choose, a single connection is a single point of failure. The common ways to stay online are:
- Broadband plus a mobile backup. 4G and 5G business mobile broadband sits alongside full fibre or SoGEA, and your router switches over automatically if the main line fails.
- A leased line plus broadband. A full fibre or SoGEA line keeps calls and cloud systems running while the leased line is repaired.
- Two diverse leased lines. For sites that cannot go offline, Openreach offers two diversely routed feeds from separate exchanges, terminating in different parts of the building with at least 5 metres between the duct feeds.
A backup is only as good as its route. Two lines in the same duct can be cut by the same digger, so ask how each connection reaches your building.
Our team in Arundel and Chichester can check what is available at your address, from SoGEA and full fibre to fibre leased lines, and tell you which fits the way your business works. We have supported businesses since 2015, and when you call, you speak to our own engineers. Business broadband starts from £42.99 a month ex VAT, full fibre from £45.99 and business leased lines from £200, each with a static IP included. Ask us for a quote for your address and we will tell you what you can get and what it costs.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a leased line and broadband?
Broadband, including full fibre and SoGEA, is shared with other premises in your area, uploads more slowly than it downloads and is repaired on broadband terms, typically by the next working day for full fibre. A leased line is a dedicated fibre just for your business, uploads as fast as it downloads and comes with a service level agreement, typically a 5 hour fix or less on Openreach Ethernet lines.
Is a leased line faster than FTTP?
Not always for downloads. Openreach’s fastest full fibre tier offers up to 1.8 Gbps download. The leased line advantage is upload and consistency: a 1 Gbps leased line uploads at 1 Gbps and is not shared, while 1 Gbps business full fibre uploads at 220 Mbps and can slow at peak times.
Is a leased line worth it for a small business?
It is worth it when losing the connection would stop the business, when phones and key systems run over the internet, or when you upload a lot of data. For a small office without those needs, full fibre or SoGEA broadband with a 4G or 5G backup is usually better value.
How much more does a leased line cost than broadband?
Selectra prices 1 Gbps business full fibre at £30 to £50 a month and a 1 Gbps leased line at £350 to £700 a month, excluding VAT, a gap of roughly £300 a month. Our SoGEA broadband is £42.99 a month and our leased lines start from £200 a month, both excluding VAT.
Why does a leased line take longer to install than broadband?
A leased line needs a new dedicated fibre built into your building, often with a survey, permits and sometimes digging. Selectra puts a typical installation at 45 to 90 working days where fibre is already in the street, while broadband, where available, is usually a single engineer visit.
Can I use broadband as a backup for a leased line?
Yes. A full fibre, SoGEA or 4G or 5G connection on a different route can take over automatically if the leased line fails, keeping calls and cloud systems running while the fault is fixed.
Sources
- Openreach: Network connectivity for your commercial developments (PDF, February 2025)
- ISPreview: Openreach confirm UK launch of 1.8Gbps and 1.2Gbps FTTP tiers, February 2024
- ISPreview: Openreach reveal UK plan to launch symmetric 1Gbps FTTP broadband, August 2024
- ISPreview: Openreach offer cheaper 80Mbps FTTC broadband upgrades, August 2023
- Ofcom: Quality of service for Ethernet and dark fibre, statement (PDF), 30 October 2023
- ISPreview: Openreach increase fixed fee for excess construction charges on EAD, June 2025
- ISPreview: Openreach increases Ethernet exemption from excess construction charges, March 2026
- Selectra: Leased lines, UK prices and providers
- BT Business: How long does it take to install a new BTnet service?
- Beaming: How long does it take to install a fibre leased line?
Prices, speeds, fix times and installation times vary by provider and address. This guide reflects what we found in November 2026.
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