FTTP business broadband and Ethernet leased lines both deliver fibre to your premises. The difference is not the cable — it is what happens to your traffic beyond the front door.
FTTP business broadband
FTTP is a contended service. Bandwidth is shared with other users on the same infrastructure. Speeds are strong (typically 300Mbps to 1Gbps download in 2025), prices are low, and for most small offices it is more than enough for cloud email, video calls, VoIP and normal SaaS use.
Uploads are asymmetrical — a 900Mbps down / 110Mbps up FTTP service is common. That is fine for most workflows, less good if you move very large files (video, CAD, medical imaging) all day.
Ethernet leased lines
A leased line is uncontended and symmetrical. Same speed up and down, dedicated to your business, with strict SLAs and defined repair times (usually a 5-hour target-to-fix). No sharing, no throttling, and typically a much better latency profile.
The trade-off is price and lead time. Leased lines cost several times more than FTTP and take longer to install — often 60–90 working days if new civils are required.
When to choose which
- Small office, cloud email and phones: FTTP is usually plenty.
- Retail or card-payment-heavy: FTTP with 4G/5G failover.
- Contact centre or heavy cloud usage: leased line.
- Multi-site with critical uptime: leased lines with diverse carriers.
- CAD / architecture / video production: symmetrical service required — leased line.
- Site backup and disaster recovery: dedicated leased line for reliability.
What the SLA actually says
A good leased-line SLA specifies target repair times (often 5 hours), guaranteed uptime (usually 99.95% or 99.99%), and service credits if the carrier misses either. FTTP SLAs are lighter — typically next-business-day fault fix. Read the fault-reporting clauses carefully; some carriers exclude power outages and third-party civils damage from the SLA clock.
Backup and failover
- 4G or 5G failover router — cheap, sub-minute failover for a single line.
- Second FTTP from a different provider on a diverse route.
- Second leased line from a diverse carrier for true resilience.
- Software-defined networking (SD-WAN) to load-balance across multiple connections.
Atom IP will run a free postcode-level availability check across every UK carrier and come back with a straight comparison.
Atom IP delivers Broadband & Leased Lines across the UK. Book a free technology review and we’ll come back with practical, jargon-free findings.
