Not long ago, your internet connection was something you barely thought about. Today it runs almost everything: your email, your files, your phones, your card payments, your backups. When it slows down or drops, work stops. That makes the connection you choose one of the more important decisions your business makes, and it usually comes down to two options: business broadband or a leased line.
The trouble is the sales patter around both is full of jargon. Here is the plain-English version, and a simple way to work out which one is right for you.
The one difference that matters: shared vs dedicated
Almost everything else follows from this.
Business broadband is shared. Your connection runs over lines that are shared with other homes and businesses in your area. It is cheaper because the cost is spread across everyone using it. The downside is contention: at busy times, when everyone is online at once, the speed you actually get can drop. That is why broadband speeds are always quoted as "up to".
A leased line is dedicated. It is a private connection, just for you, that nobody else touches. You get the full speed you pay for, all day, every day, whether it is 9am on a Monday or the middle of a busy afternoon. That reliability is what you are paying the premium for.
Why upload speed suddenly matters
Here is something most business owners have never been told. Standard broadband is asymmetric, which means your download speed is much faster than your upload speed. For years that was fine, because we mostly pulled things down from the internet.
Not any more. Think about what your business now sends up to the internet:
- Every video call, where your camera is streaming out constantly
- Your VoIP phone calls, where your voice travels over the connection
- Files saved to Microsoft 365 or SharePoint
- Your nightly backups pushing data offsite
- Sending large files to clients
On a connection with a weak upload speed, calls break up, video freezes and backups crawl, even if the download speed looks impressive on paper. A leased line is symmetric: the upload speed matches the download speed. For a business that lives in the cloud and relies on its phones, that is often the real reason to upgrade.
What happens when it breaks
This is the part that gets overlooked until the worst day. With most business broadband, if your connection goes down, you are in a queue like everyone else, and the fix comes when it comes. There is no promise attached.
A leased line comes with a Service Level Agreement, a written promise about uptime and, crucially, a guaranteed fix time if something goes wrong, often measured in hours. When your internet being down means your whole business is down, that guarantee is worth a great deal.
What about full fibre?
There is a strong middle option that has appeared in the last few years. Full fibre broadband, also called FTTP, runs fibre all the way to your building rather than to a green cabinet down the road. It is far faster and more reliable than the older broadband it replaces, and it is now available in many parts of Leicester and Leicestershire.
For a lot of small businesses, full fibre is now the sensible sweet spot: much better than old-style broadband, without the cost of a full leased line. Whether it is enough depends on how much you rely on that upload speed and that uptime guarantee.
How to decide: five honest questions
Forget the speed numbers for a moment and ask these:
- Could you keep working if the internet went down for a day? If the honest answer is no, uptime guarantees matter, and that points towards a leased line.
- Do your phones run over the internet? VoIP needs a stable, low-lag connection. Choppy calls cost you credibility with customers.
- Do you live in the cloud? If everything is in Microsoft 365 and staff work from files stored online, upload speed and consistency really count.
- How many people are online at once? A handful of staff on email is very different from a busy office all on video calls.
- Is your team growing? It is worth buying for where you will be in two years, not just today, because changing connection is not something you want to do every year.
How we help
Choosing a connection should start with what your business actually does, not with a speed on a flyer. We look at how you work, how much you rely on the cloud and your phones, and what downtime would really cost you, then we source and manage the right business connectivity to match. Because we also look after your phones and IT, it all fits together rather than being three separate suppliers pointing fingers when something goes wrong.
If your internet feels slow, keeps dropping, or you are simply not sure whether you are paying for the right thing, we are happy to take an honest look and tell you where you stand. No jargon, no hard sell.