Leased Line Prices in the UK: What Can You Expect?

Many businesses overlook leased lines as they’re under the impression they’re expensive. While leased lines used to be out of reach for some businesses, they’re now more competitively priced.

Thanks to greater competition between providers, leased lines are now more affordable than before. It’s never been a better time to consider switching your business to a more reliable and faster broadband.

What does a leased line cost in 2019?

You can invest in a leased line for your business for between £150 and £1,000 per month. This makes it an attractive choice for many businesses, especially fast-growing enterprises. Of course, the price of a leased line rises with the speed, so you can expect to pay around £437 per month for a 1Gbps line.

The more affordable quotes are for lower speeds like 100Mbps, but there’s plenty of deals to be found for 500Mbps and beyond too. In many cases it’s not a big jump in leased line price from 500Mbps to 1Gbps, so you can enjoy plenty of bandwidth at a wallet-friendly cost.

How much does a leased line cost?

How do leased line prices compare to other business broadband?

Business broadband is readily available, with choices that include ADSL, fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), fibre to the premises (FTTP) and leased lines. When it comes to pricing, leased lines operate in the top tier. They’re competitively priced but you can expect to pay more than other, less advanced connections.

Let’s say you’re looking for broadband close to 100Mbps. A leased line at this speed would be close to £260 per month, while a fibre broadband connection at 76Mbps is closer to £60 per month.

If you’re on a tight budget and speed is your only concern, a leased line may be an option to consider at a later date. For many businesses though, the increase in price is outweighed by the extra benefits that come with a leased line.

What extra value do you get from your leased line?

Leased lines are popular for good reason. They offer you an enhanced service above other types of business broadband. If you’re looking for a highly effective, fast and reliable connection you’ll see plenty of value from your leased line.

Dedicated connection

One of the major selling points of a leased line is the dedicated connection. Leased lines are uncontended, so you’re not sharing the connection with any other business. With a typical business fibre broadband line you’re looking at a contention ratio of 20:1, so having the line to yourself is an attractive benefit.

For this, you pay a premium, but the benefits far outweigh the cost. You’re not subject to the usual network slowdown at peak times, so you can enjoy the speed you pay for day and night.

Fast upload speeds

While you can get similar download speeds at a lower cost with an FTTC or FTTP connection, your upload speed will always be limited. Most business broadband deals have a maximum upload speed close to 18Mbps. This is adequate for some businesses, but for others, it becomes a barrier to being productive and competitive.

If you need to upload large files regularly or transfer data to and from the cloud, the fast upload speed you get with a leased line is priceless. You can swap that maximum 18Mbps upload speed for one that matches your download speed, so you can enjoy upload speeds of up to 10Gbps depending on your contract.

leased line upload speeds

Service level agreement

There’s another big benefit that’s included in your leased line price – a service level agreement. This contract sets out what you can expect from your provider when it comes to reliability, fixes and technical support. It gives you added stability should anything go wrong with your broadband.

You can expect some level of support with any business broadband package, but the service quality you get from a leased line contract is unparalleled. If there’s a problem with your line you’ll have the comfort of knowing it’ll be dealt with swiftly, with no fuss. That’s invaluable when it comes to keeping your business operational.

What affects the cost of a leased line?

Leased line prices are similar throughout the UK, but there are some factors that can influence the cost. It all depends on what’s available in your area, what speed you choose and how easy it is to install the connection at your premises.

Leased line speed

Like all other broadband deals, leased line prices are based on the speed you choose. There’s a range of bandwidth options available from 10Mbps to 10Gbps, and with that comes a difference in cost.

For a 100Mbps leased line, you can expect to pay between £260 and £472 per month. A 500Mbps line in the same location costs between £411 and £897 per month. For a 1Gbps leased line, you’re looking at between £437 and £1,218 per month.

Average UK Leased Line Costs

You’ll notice there’s only a small difference in price between a 500Mbps and 1Gbps leased line, but your speed almost doubles. For an extra £26 per month, it’s well worth considering the higher speed package.

Providers

As you can see from the figures above, there’s a huge variety in the monthly cost of a leased line. The speed is the same and contracts are similar – the main difference is the provider you choose.

Throughout the country you’ll find a handful of providers happy to build a leased line connection for you. The main providers include TalkTalk Business, CityFibre and BT Business. It’s CityFibre that consistently ranks as most affordable in our research, followed by TalkTalk Business. BT Business is a more expensive product in most cases.

In some cases, a lower-speed leased line is considerably more expensive than one with more bandwidth. For example, a 30Mbps leased line with TalkTalk Business is around £395 per month. A 100Mbps leased line in the same location costs just £260 per month with CityFibre. It’s always worth running a few searches through our free leased line quote tool to find the best deal.

Location

All broadband connections rely on infrastructure, something that’s vastly different depending on the town or city you operate from. Some locations are easier to service than others, and where there’s high demand in a city you’ll find a better deal as providers compete for your business.

Our recent research into leased line costs found that Liverpool was the most expensive city for a 1Gbps leased line connection, at £747 per month. Bradford was the most affordable, costing just £495 per month for the same bandwidth. On the whole though, leased line prices were consistently around the £500 per month mark for most UK cities we researched.

best leased line prices

How to find the best leased line prices

It isn’t always easy to find the best deals on leased lines. Many providers keep their prices hidden or ask you to call and speak to their sales team for more information. Some deals are only available through trusted suppliers like Amvia and can’t be ordered directly. This makes it difficult to compare leased line prices effectively.

The good news is we’ve developed a tool that makes finding the right leased line easy. When you’re busy, you don’t want to be making multiple calls to providers. With our search tool you get the information you need to make a decision quickly.

Using only your postcode, desired speed and contract length we can bring you a list of the best deals from the UK’s top telecoms providers. This includes discounted rates and products that aren’t available direct to the public, helping you save an average of 37% on your leased line price.

Leased lines don’t have to be expensive. With the right help, you can find an affordable deal on a business broadband connection that gives you the speed and stability you need.