Key takeaways, 2026
- What it is: a dedicated, uncontended and symmetric fibre link with a financially-backed SLA, sold on 12, 36 or 60 month contracts.
- 2026 prices: £200 to £400/month for 100 Mbps, £350 to £700 for 1 Gbps, £1,500+ for 10 Gbps, plus install and possible ECCs.
- When it wins: heavy VoIP, large file transfers, multi-site VPNs, regulated industries needing a written SLA, mission-critical hosted apps.
- When FTTP is enough: a 5 to 15 person office on cloud apps, with a 5G or 4G failover line for resilience.
1 Gbps
Symmetric, typical
Same speed up and down.
£350+
1 Gbps starts at
Per month, ex VAT, 2026.
99.95%
Uptime SLA
Standard 2026 commercial tier.
4-6 h
Mean time to repair
Contractual repair window.
What a leased line actually is
A leased line is a dedicated, uncontended and symmetric fibre circuit, sold with a financially-backed service level agreement. Each of those three words matters. "Dedicated" means the line connects your premises to the provider's network and is used only by your business. "Uncontended" means the bandwidth is reserved for you, not shared with neighbouring connections as on FTTP. "Symmetric" means the upload speed is identical to the download speed, which is the single biggest reason businesses pay the premium.
A standard FTTP plan, including the new full-fibre 1 Gbps products, ships a different shape of service: best-effort speeds, contention at the cabinet, asymmetric upload (typically 110 to 220 Mbps on a 1 Gbps plan), and a consumer-style support contract with no service credits. For most home offices and small teams that is fine. For a 30 person office running cloud telephony, hosted CRM and twice-daily file transfers to clients, the asymmetry alone is usually the reason to upgrade.
The leased line technologies, ranked by what you actually buy in 2026
The leased line market has consolidated. Some legacy products are still on sale but are no longer sensible choices for a new install. The ones that matter in 2026 are EoFTTC for cost-sensitive small sites, EAD over FTTP for the mainstream, and dedicated dark fibre for the largest networks.
Recommended in 2026
- ▸EAD over FTTP: the mainstream choice, 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps symmetric on Openreach fibre;
- ▸EoFTTC: cheaper entry point for smaller sites, copper-served, capped near 80 Mbps;
- ▸Dedicated dark fibre: for large networks needing 10 to 100 Gbps and full control of optics;
- ▸Point-to-point fibre: direct site-to-site link for multi-office WANs.
Legacy, avoid for new installs
- ▸Ethernet First Mile (EFM): bonded copper, slow, being withdrawn with PSTN switch-off;
- ▸GEA-FTTC EAD: superseded by EAD over FTTP in almost all UK postcodes;
- ▸SDSL or T1: obsolete, do not buy;
- ▸PSTN-based managed circuits: incompatible with the post-2027 all-IP network.
UK leased line prices, 2026
Pricing varies less than most businesses expect, once SLAs and contract terms are matched. The biggest swing factor is the install: in a city centre on lit fibre, the install is usually free with a 36 month commitment. On a rural site with civil works required, an ECC can dwarf the monthly fee.
| Speed (symmetric) | Typical use case | Monthly, ex VAT | Install | SLA tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 Mbps | Small office, 5 to 20 staff | £200 to £400 | Free to £2,000 | 99.95% |
| 200 Mbps | Heavy VoIP, hosted apps | £275 to £500 | Free to £2,500 | 99.95% |
| 500 Mbps | Medium office, file transfers | £325 to £625 | Free to £3,000 | 99.95% to 99.99% |
| 1 Gbps | Mainstream business choice | £350 to £700 | Free to £3,000 | 99.95% to 99.99% |
| 10 Gbps | Large enterprise, data centre | £1,500 to £3,000 | £3,000 to £10,000 | 99.99% |
Indicative prices for a 36 month contract on EAD over FTTP, before any excess construction charges. Quote from at least three providers, the spread within the same speed tier is often £150/month.
Leased line vs FTTP: when does the upgrade pay off
With business FTTP plans at 1 Gbps now widely available for £30 to £50 a month, the financial gap between FTTP and a 1 Gbps leased line is roughly £300 a month, or £3,600 a year. That premium is straightforward to justify in some operations and impossible in others.
A leased line wins
- ▸Cloud telephony or VoIP for 20+ users;
- ▸Daily large-file transfers (CAD, video, point-of-sale data);
- ▸Hosted business apps where downtime stops work;
- ▸Multi-site VPN or SD-WAN backbone;
- ▸Regulated industries (finance, healthcare, legal) needing a written SLA;
- ▸Any site where one hour of downtime costs more than £300.
FTTP is enough
- ▸5 to 15 person office on standard cloud apps;
- ▸Web, email, Slack or Teams, occasional video calls;
- ▸Single-site retail or hospitality;
- ▸Sites with reliable 5G coverage for failover;
- ▸Tight budget where £350/month is meaningful;
- ▸Test offices, short-lease sites, pop-up locations.
What a genuine business SLA looks like
An SLA is only as good as the service credits attached to it. A line that promises 99.95% uptime but offers no compensation when it falls below that figure is selling marketing, not a contract. When comparing leased line quotes, focus on four numbers:
- Target uptime, expressed as a percentage of the billing month;
- Mean time to respond, how quickly someone picks up the phone when you log a fault;
- Mean time to repair, the contractual window to restore service;
- Service credits, how much money is automatically refunded when targets are missed.
Standard 2026 commercial tiers offer 99.95% uptime, 1 hour response and 4 to 6 hour repair, with service credits of 1 to 5 days of the monthly fee per breach. Premium tiers move to 99.99% uptime and 2 hour repair, with proactive monitoring, a named account manager and credits stacking up to 100% of the monthly fee. Mission-critical estates can negotiate further on top of these defaults.
UK leased line providers, 2026
Almost every UK retail leased line is delivered over Openreach fibre under the hood (the EAD product), so the differentiation between resellers happens at the support, contract and bundled-service layer rather than the network. The exceptions are Virgin Media Business, Colt and Lumen, which run material fibre footprints of their own in addition to reselling Openreach.
| Provider | Underlying network | Best at |
|---|---|---|
| BT Business | Openreach EAD, own backbone | UK-wide reach, bundled voice and mobile |
| Virgin Media Business | Own fibre footprint plus Openreach | Urban areas with VMB fibre, faster install |
| Vodafone Business | Openreach EAD, own backbone | Mobile plus fixed bundles, international |
| Colt | Own dense city-network | London, financial services, low-latency |
| Zen Internet | Openreach EAD | UK-based support, SME-friendly contracts |
| BeFibre Business | Own altnet fibre, plus Openreach | Sites in BeFibre footprint, competitive pricing |
| Gamma Business | Openreach EAD | Bundling with Horizon cloud telephony |
| TalkTalk Business | Own backbone, Openreach access | Price-led EAD plans, SD-WAN |
| Lumen | Global own network | Multi-country WANs, cloud-on-ramps |
Pricing is broadly comparable once SLAs are matched. The differentiation is at the support, install lead time and complementary services layer.
Install times, contracts and the ECC trap
A typical EAD install in 2026 takes 45 to 90 working days on a brownfield site with existing Openreach fibre on the street. Sites in rural areas or business parks built since the last network sweep can run to 6 or 9 months, particularly when wayleaves are required from landowners. Plan the order well ahead of any office move.
Contract terms are usually 12, 36 or 60 months. The 36 month term is the sweet spot for most UK SMEs: free install, lower monthly than a 12 month contract, and short enough to upgrade speed before the next refresh. 60 month deals are only sensible on sites you are certain to occupy for that long, exit fees are punitive.
The variable to scrutinise most carefully is the excess construction charge (ECC). Every quote includes a survey clause: if civil works push the build cost above a threshold (typically £2,800), the excess is passed on to you. On a town-centre office that is rarely an issue. On a new-build estate or a rural site, the ECC can be £15,000 to £50,000 and arrives after the contract is signed. Always ask for a written ECC assessment before signing, and consider an alternative carrier or a wireless leased line if the figure is unreasonable.
Frequently asked questions
A leased line is a dedicated, uncontended and symmetric fibre connection between your premises and your provider, sold with a financially-backed service level agreement. Unlike standard FTTP, the full bandwidth is reserved for your business only, upload speed matches download speed exactly, and the provider pays you compensation if uptime falls below the contracted target (typically 99.95% to 99.99%).
Typical 2026 monthly prices, ex VAT: £200 to £400 for 100/100 Mbps, £350 to £700 for 1 Gbps symmetric, and £1,500 to £3,000 for 10 Gbps. Install fees of £1,500 to £3,000 are usually waived on a 36 month contract. Excess construction charges (ECCs) for civil works can add anything from a few thousand pounds to £50,000 on remote or fibre-poor sites.
Yes for some businesses, no for others. FTTP is best-effort, contended at the cabinet and asymmetric (upload speed is far lower than download). A leased line wins when you run VoIP at scale, multi-site VPNs, heavy file transfers to clients, hosted business apps, or compliance-grade SLAs. For a 5 to 15 person office that mostly browses, video-calls and uses cloud apps, a 1 Gbps FTTP with a 5G failover is now genuinely sufficient.
Standard 2026 commercial SLAs offer 99.95% uptime, with a 4 to 6 hour mean time to repair. Higher tiers go to 99.99% uptime and 2 to 4 hour repair, usually with proactive monitoring and a named account manager. The SLA must include service credits, automatic payments back to you if the contracted target is missed in a given month, otherwise the SLA is marketing rather than a contract.
An ECC is the one-off civil-works cost charged when your provider has to dig, blow new fibre or extend the network to reach your premises. The first £2,800 of civil works is typically absorbed into the install fee, and anything above that is passed on to you as an ECC. In a city centre on lit fibre, the ECC is usually £0. On a rural business park 800 metres from the nearest network point, ECCs of £15,000 to £50,000 are not unusual.
For wholesale fibre, almost everyone resells BT Openreach (EAD product). For retail business contracts the main UK providers are BT Business, Virgin Media Business, Vodafone Business, Colt, Zen Internet, BeFibre Business, Gamma Business, TalkTalk Business and Lumen. Pricing varies less than you might expect once SLAs are matched, the differences come from install times, account management and complementary services (voice, SD-WAN, security).