Key takeaways, 2026
- Buy FTTP, not ADSL or FTTC: full-fibre reaches around 85% of UK premises in 2026 and is now cheaper per Mbps than the copper services it replaces.
- Realistic 2026 price: £25 to £35 a month for 100 Mbps, £35 to £45 for 500 Mbps, £40 to £55 for 1 Gbps, on a 24-month business contract.
- PSTN switch-off January 2027: every business still on a copper phone line must move to hosted VoIP or SIP trunking before the end of next year.
- Failover matters more than headline speed: a £10 a month 4G backup SIM in a dual-WAN router protects revenue better than upgrading from 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps.
~85%
UK FTTP coverage
Premises that can order full-fibre.
£25
100 Mbps from
Per month, 24-month business term.
Jan 2027
PSTN switch-off
Copper phone lines retired UK-wide.
100 kbps
Upload per VoIP call
QoS-tagged, per concurrent call.
What counts as a small business in broadband terms
For the purposes of choosing a broadband contract, the line between consumer, small business and enterprise sits at headcount and traffic mix, not turnover. A sole trader working from home, a micro-business with one to nine employees and a small business with 10 to 49 employees all sit comfortably on a single FTTP line in 2026. Above 50 staff, or with intensive video and cloud-backup workloads, the conversation moves to a leased line.
The other dimension that matters is tolerance for downtime. A boutique e-commerce site, a card-paying café, a small accountancy practice running cloud software and a video studio uploading raw 4K footage all need a working line in different ways. The right answer is rarely the fastest line ; it is the one with the right SLA, the right failover and the right upload speed for the work you actually do.
Consumer broadband versus business broadband, honestly
The underlying fibre is identical. What a business tariff adds, line by line, is summarised below. Decide which of these features you actually use, then price the contract.
Business tariff gives you
- ▸Priority repair SLA, typically 6 to 24 hours versus 72 on consumer
- ▸Static IPv4 included or for a small extra fee
- ▸No traffic management at peak times
- ▸UK-based business support line, separate queue
- ▸VAT-recoverable invoicing in the company name
Business tariff does NOT give you
- ▸Faster underlying line than the consumer equivalent
- ▸A genuine four-hour fix guarantee (that needs a leased line)
- ▸Symmetric upload, unless on a specific FTTP-symmetric SKU
- ▸Automatic failover (you have to add a 4G or 5G backup router)
- ▸Anything useful for a business with no downtime tolerance
Indicative small business FTTP prices, 2026
Prices below are the typical range on a 24-month business contract, ex VAT, from a mix of incumbent and altnet ISPs. Promo prices for the first 6 to 12 months can be lower ; always look at the post-promo rate.
| Headline speed | Typical upload | Monthly price (24m) | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 Mbps FTTP | 20 to 50 Mbps | £25 to £35 | Sole trader, 1 to 3 staff, light cloud use |
| 300 Mbps FTTP | 50 to 100 Mbps | £30 to £40 | 3 to 8 staff, video calls, card payments |
| 500 Mbps FTTP | 75 to 150 Mbps | £35 to £45 | 8 to 20 staff, cloud accounting, daily backups |
| 1 Gbps FTTP | 100 to 1000 Mbps | £40 to £55 | 20 to 50 staff, video editing, heavy upload |
Source: indicative 2026 list prices across BT Business, Vodafone Business, Virgin Media Business, Zen Internet, Hyperoptic Business, Community Fibre Business and BeFibre. Static IPv4 adds roughly £5 to £10 a month.
Who to buy from in 2026
The market splits into three tiers in 2026, and each has a different sweet spot for small businesses.
Incumbents
BT Business, Vodafone Business, Virgin Media Business. Widest UK coverage, best for multi-site businesses and anyone who values a single throat to choke.
Strength: coverage and SLA
Specialist business ISPs
Zen Internet, TalkTalk Business, Spitfire, M247. Excellent technical support, willing to talk to a sysadmin, often the right choice for a 10 to 50 seat office.
Strength: support quality
Altnets
Hyperoptic Business, Community Fibre Business, BeFibre, CityFibre via ISPs. Aggressively cheaper at the same speed, often with symmetric upload options. Coverage depends on postcode.
Strength: price per Mbps
The PSTN switch-off, and what your phones do next
The copper Public Switched Telephone Network is being retired across the UK by January 2027. Openreach is replacing it with all-IP services: voice now travels as data over your broadband line. For a small business the practical implications are three: every analogue extension needs replacing, alarms and lift lines that use the PSTN need re-engineering, and your phone number itself moves to a hosted VoIP or SIP-trunked service.
The common 2026 hosted-voice choices for an SME are 3CX, RingCentral, 8x8, Zoom Phone and Microsoft Teams Phone. Pricing ranges from £4 to £18 per user per month. On the network side, allow around 100 kbps of upstream per concurrent call, enable QoS on your router so voice packets are prioritised, and keep your mobile phones as the emergency fallback in case the broadband line is down. Our guide to leased lines covers when call volumes justify moving voice off the shared business broadband line entirely.
Failover: the hidden upgrade that beats raw speed
For most small businesses, the difference between a working day and a lost one is not 500 versus 1000 Mbps. It is whether the line works at all. Openreach faults take 24 to 72 hours to clear on a business broadband SLA, which is a long time without card payments or VoIP. The standard mitigation in 2026 is a dual-WAN router with a 4G or 5G backup SIM that takes over automatically when the fibre line drops.
Hardware from Teltonika, Draytek or Cradlepoint runs around £300 one-off, plus £10 to £20 a month for a data-only SIM from EE, Vodafone or Three. Failover is sub-second on most modern routers, so the staff barely notice. The other route is dual broadband from two providers on physically separate networks, for example an Openreach line and a Virgin Media or altnet line ; more robust but it doubles the monthly broadband spend. For mission-critical sites (card-heavy retail, clinics, recording studios), the dual-broadband route is usually justified.
When to graduate to a leased line
Business FTTP is the right answer until one of three things becomes true. You need symmetric upload at scale, for example a video studio or a hosted SaaS provider. You need a guaranteed four-hour fix with real financial credits in the contract, not the soft "next working day" target on business broadband. Or you have more than around 25 people using cloud applications and VoIP at the same time and contention on the shared line starts to bite.
A 100 Mbps symmetric leased line in 2026 starts at around £200 a month, a 1 Gbps at around £400 a month, on a 36-month term, with an install fee in the £500 to £2,000 region depending on civils. Read more in our full leased lines guide.
Frequently asked questions
For most micro-businesses, the honest answer is no, not really. The underlying fibre line is identical, and a £30 consumer FTTP tariff delivers the same speed as a £45 business one. What you pay extra for on a business contract is a priority repair SLA (typically 6 to 24 hours fix versus 72 hours on consumer), a static IP, no traffic management at peak times, and a dedicated business support line. If a few hours of outage would cost you real money, that gap is worth the £10 to £15 a month. If it would not, a consumer tariff is fine.
On a 24-month FTTP business contract in 2026, typical headline prices are £25 to £35 a month for 100 Mbps, £35 to £45 a month for 500 Mbps and £40 to £55 a month for 1 Gbps. Add roughly £5 to £10 a month for a static IPv4 if you need one. Setup fees are usually waived or capped at £25. Altnets (Hyperoptic, Community Fibre, BeFibre) tend to undercut BT Business and Virgin Media Business by 15 to 25% on the same speed.
Openreach is retiring the copper PSTN network in January 2027. From that date there are no analogue lines left in the UK. Any small business still using a desk phone over a copper line needs to move to hosted VoIP or SIP trunking before then. The common 2026 choices are 3CX, RingCentral, 8x8, Zoom Phone and Microsoft Teams Phone. Budget around 100 kbps of upstream per concurrent call, enable QoS on your router, and keep a 4G or mobile fallback for emergency calls.
Be honest about this when reading the small print. A genuine four-hour fix SLA only exists on leased lines (EFM or fibre Ethernet), which start at around £200 a month. At £30 to £60 a month, "business broadband" gives you a care level upgrade: target fix within the next working day, priority queueing on the support line, and a small per-day rebate if the target is missed. That is genuinely better than consumer broadband but it is not a guarantee.
The standard 2026 small-business failover is a 4G or 5G backup router with automatic failover. Hardware from Teltonika, Draytek or Cradlepoint costs around £300, and a data-only SIM with 100 to 500 GB a month runs £10 to £20. The router switches to mobile within a few seconds of the fibre line dropping, so card payments, VoIP and email keep working. The other option is dual broadband from two physically separate providers (for example an Openreach line and a Virgin Media or altnet line), which is more robust but doubles the monthly cost.
Move to a leased line when one of three things becomes true: you need symmetric upload (the same speed up as down) for video, cloud backup or hosted services ; you need a guaranteed four-hour fix SLA with financial credits ; or you have more than around 25 staff all using cloud apps and VoIP at the same time. A 100 Mbps symmetric leased line in 2026 starts at around £200 a month, a 1 Gbps at around £400 a month, on a 36-month term. Below that staff count and use profile, business FTTP is the better value.