A growing business needs high-speed and robust and secure communications. If you are starting out or are a micro-business, you can probably get by on a domestic or business broadband package. But it doesn’t take long before you’ll need a Business Leased Line.
Then it is time for a leased line, your exclusive, gold-standard connection.
The simple reason for choosing a leased line is that it is yours alone. No more sharing of that valuable, essential bandwidth.
Want to know more? Here is our quick guide to leased lines…
What is a leased line?
A leased line is rented from a business telecoms supplier. It is mainly used for high-speed internet connections, or as a dedicated link between two premises.
The line offers Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) that only carries communications and traffic to and from your company. This dedicated line can be used for large amounts of data, voice and video.
Most people are unaware that they share their bandwidth with other users. Unsurprisingly, internet providers are not particularly keen to point this out. In fact, it is almost impossible to find the ‘contention ratio’ – i.e. how many people you are sharing your broadband bandwidth with.
We did a quick research of the major internet providers to discover their contention ratios – but not one has published the figure.
If you go back several years, the typical contentions ratios were 50:1 for home broadband and 20:1 for business broadband. These figures are out of date and no one is willing to reveal what they are now!
The last statement from BT, for example, stated that “Although BT Business Broadband is a contended service, it’s no longer contended at the exchange level by the previous 20:1 and 50:1 ratios.”
Suffice to say, unless you have a leased line, it is unlikely that you have your broadband bandwidth all to yourself!
What are the ups and downs?
Cyclists and walkers will be well aware that travelling upwards is far slower than heading downwards. Apparently, it’s something to do with gravity.
The same applies to broadband. Although, gravity is most certainly not the issue.
From day one, it has been significantly quicker to download from the internet than it has been to upload.
Internet providers are quite happy to confirm this. For instance, for our postcode, BT’s Fibre Essential package offers:
- Download speed range 19Mb – 29Mb
- Upload speed range 4Mb – 6Mb
In other words, for a typical home package, download speeds are approximately five times faster than uploads.
And that makes sense. At home, we are far more likely to download than upload. Most of us are more likely to stream an episode of Bridgerton or The Crown from Netflix, than upload our own historical period drama!
For a business, there is likely to be a far more even distribution of down and uploading, whether that is sending emails or files, or making VoIP calls.
The great thing about a leased line is that you can control how the bandwidth is distributed. Which is hugely advantageous when sending large files or communicating with customers.
Who needs a leased line?
The simple answer is any business that generates significant internet or telecoms traffic, over and above that created by a household or micro business.
If you answer yes to any of these questions, you may need a leased line:
- Do you have remote locations or offices?
- Do you have a large number of employees (over 40 people)?
- Does your business rely on the internet?
- Would losing an internet connection be damaging to your business?
- Do you make video calls?
- Do you have people working from home?
- Do you have a call centre or telesales team?
- Do you use cloud tools such as Office 365 or Google Drive?
Security and reliability
Having your own dedicated line allows greater speed and capacity, and also increases security and reliability. A leased line avoids any contention from other businesses or individuals.
A leased line contract comes with a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which defines expected service levels and offers peace of mind, as well as 24-hour monitoring. In the extremely rare instance of an outage, it’s highly likely that the problem will have been spotted and fixed before you even realise there is one.
A leased line reduces the inherent risks of a shared line and is fully supported by our experienced, expert engineers.
Are there any downsides to leased lines?
Inevitably, there will be an additional cost if you rent your own line, as compared to sharing lines with others, although the price of connectivity is falling.
However, a leased line from Rubix consolidates everything – meaning you could make considerable cost savings overall. And you no longer have to worry about Fair Usage Policy (FUP) as you can use as much data as you like for the monthly price you agree.
In any case, the benefits in terms of connectivity speeds and efficiency improvements will far outweigh the cost of the upgrade.
Is it right for you? Talk to us and we will give honest and impartial advice on the best solution.
Why Rubix?
With leased lines, as with all our services, we always listen. We want to understand how your business works. We would only recommend a leased line if we can see there is a clear benefit to your organisation.
We provide premium quality, dedicated leased lines for all your business data communication needs throughout the south of England, including London.
With a guaranteed high bandwidth, you pay only for what you use and upgrade as you need with no external intervention required.
With Rubix, you’re better connected.
Get in touch for more details.
