A leased line is a dedicated, private internet connection reserved solely for your business. Unlike broadband, it isn't shared with anyone else, so the speed you buy is the speed you get — the same in both directions, at every hour of the day. Here's what that means in practice, and how to decide whether your business needs one.
How a leased line actually works
A leased line is a physical fibre circuit that runs directly between your premises and your provider's network. Because that capacity is dedicated to you (the industry term is 'uncontended'), it never slows down when your neighbours or other businesses get busy.
It's also symmetric: a 1 Gbps leased line gives you 1 Gbps of download and 1 Gbps of upload. That upload speed is what makes cloud backups, video calls, VoIP and hosting feel fast and reliable — the areas where ordinary broadband tends to struggle. Our leased lines are delivered as fully dedicated circuits, and where fibre is already close to your building an FTTP leased line can shorten installation times considerably.
Leased line vs broadband: the key differences
Broadband shares its bandwidth (it's 'contended') and is asymmetric, with a much slower upload speed and no meaningful uptime guarantee. A leased line is dedicated, symmetric and SLA-backed, typically with rapid, contractual fix times.
The short version: broadband is fine for small, low-risk setups; a leased line is for businesses that can't afford slow or unreliable connectivity. If you also run several offices, multi-site connectivity can join them on a single managed network, and SD-WAN can intelligently route traffic across those links.
What's the SLA and why does it matter?
A Service Level Agreement is a written guarantee covering uptime, and often latency, packet loss and how quickly faults will be fixed. It's the difference between 'we'll get to it' and a contractual commitment with financial backing.
For any business where downtime means lost revenue — retail, professional services, anyone reliant on cloud systems — that guarantee is often the single biggest reason to move to a leased line. To protect against the rare circuit failure, a second line delivered as backup connectivity keeps you online during an outage.
Do you need a leased line?
Consider one if you have 25+ people sharing a connection, rely heavily on cloud apps like Microsoft 365, run VoIP telephony, move large files, or simply can't tolerate downtime. If none of those apply yet, full-fibre (FTTP) broadband may be a cost-effective stepping stone.
If you're weighing up the options for your site, talk to our connectivity team and we'll help you match the right circuit to how your business actually works. You can also explore our full range of connectivity and telecoms services to see how a leased line fits alongside your wider setup.