Leased Line vs SoGEA: Switch-Off Ready for £29 or Dedicated Fibre?

This comparison comes up because of a deadline. The UK's analogue phone network retires on 31 January 2027, so a great many businesses are being offered SoGEA by their current provider as the simple way to stay connected. For many of them it is the right answer. For some it is a two or three-year contract on a product they have already outgrown. Our SoGEA explainer covers the product in detail; this page puts it against a leased line so you can see where the line falls.

What SoGEA actually is

SoGEA stands for single order generic ethernet access. Technically it is the same fibre-to-the-cabinet connection as FTTC broadband, fibre to the street cabinet and copper from there to your door, sold without a phone service on the line. Commercially it is one order and one bill, which is the point: when the analogue network goes, there is no phone line to lose. Speeds top out at around 80Mbps down and 20Mbps up and fall with distance from the cabinet; the figure you are quoted at order is an estimate, confirmed when the line is tested. Business SoGEA starts from £29/month, which is the same entry price as full fibre broadband where that is available, and it is live in days on an existing line. Full fibre reached 78% of UK premises in Q3 2025 (Ofcom Connected Nations 2025), so before settling for SoGEA, check whether FTTP has arrived at your address since you last looked.

What a leased line actually is

A dedicated fibre circuit from your building to the carrier's network, reserved for you alone. The speed you buy is the speed you get in both directions, at any time of day, and faults are fixed under a contractual SLA: AMVIA's standard is 100% availability with a five-hour return to service. It starts from £69/month for 100Mbps and £129/month for 1Gbps in the best-served postcodes, takes 30 to 90 working days to install, and can carry an excess construction charge where fibre has to be built. It is, by any measure, more connection than a small office needs. It is also the only one of the two products that will still be the right answer in five years.

The honest case for SoGEA

It is cheap, it is quick, it needs no project, and for a small office doing email, Microsoft 365 and a modest amount of cloud it is enough. If you have four people on FTTC today and the business runs fine, moving to SoGEA before the switch-off is sensible housekeeping, not a compromise. Ordering a leased line for that office would be spending money to solve a problem you do not have.

The honest case against it

Twenty megabits of upload. That is the number most businesses hit first, not the download, because the things an office does all day now, hosted phone calls, video meetings, cloud back-ups, sending files to clients, all travel upstream. Share 20Mbps between ten people on a Tuesday afternoon and the calls degrade. The second problem is the contract: a new SoGEA term signed in a hurry before the switch-off can lock a growing business onto copper for two or three years while full fibre arrives on the street outside. The third is the fix time; when a copper line fails there is no clock running on the repair.

The question to ask before either

Has full fibre reached the building? Where it has, full fibre broadband costs the same as SoGEA from £29/month, removes the copper entirely, and is the better order for a small office. SoGEA exists for addresses where FTTP is not yet available. Check the Openreach fibre checker, remembering it shows only one network, or let us check every network at once. Where neither full fibre nor SoGEA is adequate, the 100Mbps leased line is the next step up, and the leased line vs broadband comparison covers the wider decision. The PSTN switch-off guide covers what else has to move before January 2027, from alarm lines to card terminals.