Leased Line vs FTTP: Which Full Fibre Does Your Business Need?
Full fibre now reaches most UK business addresses, so the question is no longer fibre or copper but which fibre product: shared business FTTP from £29/month, or a dedicated leased line from £69/month. A balanced look at speed, upload, SLA, install time and cost, and a simple way to decide.
FreeNo commitmentResponse within 2 hours
Key Facts
Quick answer
Business FTTP and a leased line can run over the same full fibre; the difference is the contract. FTTP is shared, asymmetric and best-effort, from £29/month and live in five to fifteen working days. A leased line is dedicated, symmetric and backed by a fix-time SLA, from £69/month for 100Mbps and £129/month for 1Gbps, with a 30 to 90 working-day install. Choose FTTP for an office that can ride out an outage and mostly downloads; choose a leased line when voice, video, cloud back-ups or customers depend on the connection every hour.
Written by Nathan Hill-Haimes, Co-Founder, AMVIA
Leased Line vs Business FTTP
| Feature | Leased Linefrom £69/mo (100Mbps)Recommended | Business FTTPfrom £29/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Bandwidth dedicated to you | ||
| Symmetric upload and download | Asymmetric on most tiers (for example 900/110Mbps) | |
| Speed guaranteed in the contract | Estimated range, varies at peak times | |
| Fault fix commitment | SLA, typically 5-hour return to service | Best effort, usually next working day or longer |
| Typical speeds | 100Mbps to 10Gbps | 80Mbps to 1Gbps download |
| Install lead time | 30 to 90 working days | 5 to 15 working days where fibre is live |
| Availability | Almost every UK commercial postcode (build charges possible) | Where a network has built to the building: 78% of premises |
| Static IP and business support | On business packages | |
| Typical monthly cost | £69 to £600+ | £29 to £120 |
When to Choose Each Option
Choose a leased line if...
An outage stops people working or costs you customers; you run hosted telephony, video or cloud back-ups that need upload as much as download; you have more than about fifteen people on the line; or you need a contractual fix time rather than a best-effort promise.
Choose business FTTP if...
The office is small, the work is mostly download-heavy cloud apps and email, an afternoon offline is an irritation rather than a loss, you need the line live in a fortnight, or you want a cheap second line on a different network as a failover for a leased line.
Choose both if...
The site cannot be offline. A leased line as the primary circuit with an FTTP line on a different physical network as the backup is the most common resilient design we build, and the FTTP line often costs less than the leased line's enhanced SLA option.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
In a well-served city postcode the gap between a 900Mbps business FTTP line and a 1Gbps leased line can be under £100 a month. Set that against what one working hour offline costs a twenty-person office at a loaded £25 an hour, which is £500, and the leased line's fix-time SLA pays for itself on the first serious fault. In a postcode where the leased line needs new fibre and the FTTP is already in the riser, the gap is several hundred pounds a month plus a possible build charge, and FTTP with a 4G or 5G failover is often the better-value design for a smaller office.
See the 1Gbps leased line cost guideThe AMVIA Recommendation
The AMVIA Recommendation
Decide on upload and downtime, not download speed. If your people make calls, join video meetings and push data to the cloud all day, and an outage costs money, take the leased line and consider FTTP as its backup. If the office is small and download-led, business FTTP is the sensible default and the money saved buys a failover. Either way, price both at your postcode before deciding, because the gap between them changes street by street.
Price both for my postcodeTen years ago this comparison was fibre against copper and the answer was obvious. Today both products can run over the same full fibre to the same building, which is why the question is harder and more often asked. Full fibre reaches 78% of UK premises (Ofcom Connected Nations 2025) and Openreach alone had passed more than 20 million premises by September 2025 on its way to 25 million by the end of 2026. The fibre is usually there. What you are choosing is the service contract on top of it. Our FTTP for business explainer covers the broadband side in depth; this page puts the two head to head.
What is actually different between FTTP and a leased line?
Three things, and none of them is the glass. First, contention: business FTTP shares capacity between premises on the same fibre, so the 900Mbps headline is a ceiling that drops at busy times, while a leased line reserves its bandwidth for you alone. Second, symmetry: FTTP tiers are asymmetric, typically 900Mbps down and 110Mbps up on the widely sold Openreach business tier, whereas a leased line gives the same speed in both directions. Third, the SLA: FTTP faults are fixed on a best-effort basis, commonly next working day or longer, while a leased line carries a contractual fix time, five hours return to service on AMVIA's standard SLA, with service credits if it is missed.
Those three differences explain every row in the table above. They also explain the price gap, because the carrier is selling you reserved capacity and an engineer on standby rather than a share of a pooled network.
Where FTTP genuinely wins
Price and speed to install. Entry business FTTP starts from £29/month and a 900Mbps tier is typically under £120/month; a 1Gbps leased line starts from £129/month in the best-served postcodes and rises steeply where fibre must be built. FTTP is live in five to fifteen working days where the fibre already reaches the building; a leased line takes 30 to 90 working days and can carry an excess construction charge. For a ten-person office running Microsoft 365 and a hosted phone system, FTTP with a 4G or 5G failover router is often the right design, and the saving pays for the failover several times over.
Where a leased line genuinely wins
Upload, consistency and accountability. Hosted telephony, video calls, cloud back-ups and anyone sending large files to clients all live on the upload side, where FTTP gives you a tenth of the headline. A leased line's speed does not move at four in the afternoon when the business park wakes up. And when it does fail, someone is contractually obliged to fix it inside a stated window. If you have ever tried to escalate a broadband fault that is costing you an afternoon of sales calls, that last point is the one you remember. The FTTP leased line page explains how dedicated circuits are delivered over the same Openreach full fibre.
The cost gap is smaller than it looks in the best postcodes
Where several carriers already serve a building, the gap between a top-tier FTTP line and a 1Gbps leased line can be under £100 a month. The 1Gbps cost guide and the 100Mbps cost guide show the regional ranges, and the UK leased line cost breakdown covers every tier. Where the leased line needs new fibre and the FTTP does not, the gap widens to several hundred pounds a month plus a build charge, which is why this comparison has to be priced at your postcode rather than answered in general.
The design most resilient businesses end up with
Not either, but both: a leased line as the primary circuit and an FTTP line on a physically different network as the failover, with a router that switches between them automatically. The FTTP line is cheap enough to be the insurance policy, and because it rides a different network it protects you against the duct strike or exchange fault that takes out the primary. Our backup connectivity page covers how that is built. If you are weighing shared broadband against a dedicated line more generally, the broader leased line vs broadband comparison sits alongside this one.
Price FTTP and a leased line side by side for your postcode
Enter your business postcode and we check every network at the address: the FTTP tiers live there today and the leased line carriers that can serve it, with real prices, typically within 24 hours.
Leased Line vs FTTP FAQs
No, although both can run over the same full fibre. FTTP (fibre to the premises) describes the physical connection: fibre all the way into the building. A leased line is a service contract: dedicated, uncontended bandwidth, symmetric speeds and a fix-time SLA. Business FTTP broadband uses that fibre as a shared, best-effort service; an FTTP leased line uses it as a dedicated circuit.
On download, usually yes: 900Mbps FTTP exceeds what most offices use. On upload it is not comparable, because FTTP tiers are asymmetric (110Mbps up on the 900Mbps Openreach business tier) while a 1Gbps leased line gives 1Gbps in both directions. If your work is calls, video, cloud back-ups or sending large files, upload is what you will notice.
Business FTTP starts from £29/month and a 900Mbps tier typically costs under £120/month. A 100Mbps leased line starts from £69/month and 1Gbps from £129/month in the best-served postcodes, rising where fibre has to be built. In a well-served city building the gap at gigabit speeds can be under £100 a month; elsewhere it can be several hundred.
FTTP, by some distance. Where the fibre already reaches the building, business FTTP is typically live in five to fifteen working days. A leased line takes 30 to 90 working days because it is surveyed, ordered and provisioned as a dedicated circuit, and longer if new fibre has to be built.
Yes, and it is the most common resilient design we build. The leased line carries the business day to day and the FTTP line on a different physical network takes over automatically if the primary fails. Make sure the two lines enter the building by different routes and ride different networks, or they can fail together.
Business FTTP packages usually include some service commitment, but it is a target rather than a guarantee and fixes are best effort, often next working day or longer. A leased line SLA is contractual: AMVIA's standard is 100% availability with a five-hour return to service, and service credits apply if it is missed.
Price FTTP and a Leased Line for Your Postcode
One check across every network at your address: the FTTP tiers live today and the leased line carriers that can serve the building, with real prices. No obligation, no sales pressure.
Related Resources
FTTP Leased Line
Dedicated, symmetric circuits delivered over Openreach full fibre, with a fix-time SLA.
FTTP for Business
What full fibre broadband delivers, how to check availability on every network, and when it isn't enough.
Leased Line vs Business Broadband
The broader comparison: dedicated against shared connectivity across every broadband technology.
1Gbps Leased Line Costs
Gigabit dedicated fibre from £129/month: regional pricing and what drives it.
FTTP on Demand: Costs, Lead Times & How to Order
Dedicated full fibre where standard FTTP is not live yet, and when it beats a leased line.
Backup Connectivity
How to pair a leased line with an FTTP or 4G/5G failover on a different network.
Business Leased Lines
Compare leased line costs and providers across the UK: the full AMVIA leased line hub.
Can I Get FTTP at My Business Address?
Why one checker is not enough, how to check every network in one pass, and what to order if full fibre is not live yet.