Leased Lines
A leased line is a private bidirectional or symmetric telecommunications circuit between two or more locations in exchange for a monthly fee. Basically, it is used to link two locations for private voice and/or data. Usually, one location is a corporate office, while the other can be a data centre connected to the internet, a data centre connected to a company’s current Wide Area Network (WAN), or simply another corporate office.
It is usually dedicated in such way that your business does not share the services with other businesses like you would with a broadband line. To say a leased line is symmetric, means you would get the same upload and download speed e.g. 50Mbps upload & 50Mbps download. A leased line is fibre optic, which means you can get high speeds to support your business demands, that is they are the fastest business broadband service you can buy. If you can afford it, you can get speeds in excess of 10 gigabits per second.
Leased Line vs Broadband
Another type of connection is the broadband. While both broadband and a leased line provide internet access at a fixed subscription cost. The differences between them are:
A leased line is a dedicated connection between your premises which offers a fixed bandwidth and identical upload and download speeds and is not subject to usage with others.
Broadband is not a dedicated connection between your premises. It is variable bandwidth, asymmetric, meaning faster for downloads than for uploads, and subject to usage with others.
What does this mean for business?
Leased lines are not only used to build up private networks, private telephone networks but also access the internet or a partner network, hence geographically distant businesses are connected to their offices via leased lines. And unlike dial-up connections, a leased line is always active. Hence, the primary factors are distance between end points and the speed of the circuit, affecting the monthly fee which makes it high. Also because the connection doesn’t carry anybody else's communications, the carrier can assured a very high level of quality.
It has different purposes for businesses including:
Connecting to the internet
Carrying phone calls
Linking PCs and servers in various corporate offices
Enabling staff to connect their office PCs from home
A number of companies will find it very advantageous. This is because leased lines permits faster downloads as well as faster uploads. There is also the promise of greater reliability and better support while working.
Why Fibre Leased Lines are Ideal for VOIP
As fibre connections become more common across the UK, you might be consider the advantages of some of the latest super-fast speeds and the other benefits that Fibre leased line can offer. Any business that wants to upgrade their lines to the latest connectivity solutions, may need to consider how to make the change according to the needs of their VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems. Often, this means knowing the crucial difference between fibre leased lines and fibre broadband. But at the end of the day, the exceptional upload speeds of fibre leased lines make them perfect for VoIP lines. If you’re switching away from traditional ISDN lines into VoIP, then you might be able to save enough money to facilitate your investment in the long run.
However because most of these solutions are so expensive, the most important thing to consider is what a good connection is to your business and ask how necessary is it. Organisations that consider their internet connection to be extremely important to their business will pay the premium for fibre leased lines, because the reliability of the service and the unmatched speed would help them to be more cost-effective in the long-run. But, if you are on a budget, fibre broadband can still be “superfast” for businesses that need a reliable connection.