When you start shopping for faster business broadband, two options come up again and again: full fibre and a leased line. They sound similar and both deliver fast speeds, but they are quite different products at very different price points. Choosing well can save you money, or save you from an outage that costs you far more.

What is full fibre?

Full fibre (also called FTTP, fibre to the premises) runs a fibre-optic cable all the way to your building, delivering fast, reliable broadband at a very reasonable price. It is shared infrastructure, meaning you share capacity with other users in the area, but for most small and medium businesses it is more than enough and represents excellent value.

What is a leased line?

A leased line is a dedicated connection reserved entirely for your business. The bandwidth is yours alone, upload and download speeds are equal (symmetrical), and it comes with a guaranteed service level and rapid fault-fix times. It costs more, but for businesses that cannot afford to be offline, it is built for exactly that.

The key differences

  • Dedicated vs shared: a leased line is yours alone; full fibre is shared.
  • Symmetry: leased lines have matching upload and download, ideal for cloud, VoIP and sending large files.
  • Guarantees: leased lines come with a formal service-level agreement and faster fixes.
  • Price: full fibre is far cheaper; a leased line is a premium product.

Which is right for you?

If you run a small office and need reliable, fast broadband, full fibre is usually the sensible, cost-effective choice. If your business depends on constant uptime, moves large amounts of data, runs a lot of cloud systems or has many staff, a leased line and its guarantees may be well worth the extra.

And if neither is available yet?

Plenty of rural Norfolk premises are still waiting for either. In those cases we combine Starlink and 4G/5G to deliver fast, resilient connectivity now. Our business broadband service covers all of these options, and we will survey your site and recommend the right fit rather than the most expensive one. Get in touch for honest advice.