Multi-Gigabit Leased Line Costs in the UK: 2Gbps to 10Gbps

Who needs more than 1Gbps?

Three kinds of site. Head offices and campuses that aggregate several hundred staff, their telephony and their guest networks onto one circuit. Data-heavy operations, such as media production, engineering firms moving CAD and simulation data, research groups and anyone replicating storage to the cloud or to a second site every night. And buildings that are themselves the product: multi-tenant offices, co-working operators and managed-service providers selling connectivity on to the companies inside. If your site is a single office of under 150 staff on cloud applications, the 1Gbps tier is almost always the right order, and this page is useful mainly for the bearer argument below.

How the band is sold, and why the medians look low

Carriers have largely stopped installing 1Gbps bearers in well-served commercial postcodes. The standard install is now a 10Gbps bearer, and the price you pay is set by the committed rate you order on it. That is why the median quote in this band sits close to, and in the current data set below, the median for a plain 1Gbps circuit: a large share of the quotes are 10Gbps bearers with 1Gbps or 2Gbps committed. The committed-rate pricing model is also why the middle-half ranges in the table are so wide. The bottom of the range is a lightly committed bearer in a competitive city postcode; the top is a fully committed 10Gbps or a site that needed new fibre. When you compare quotes, compare bearer and committed rate together or you are comparing different products.

Practically, the right order for most growing sites is a 10Gbps bearer with the committed rate you need now, written into the contract with the upgrade price per step. The dedicated 10Gbps cost guide covers the fully committed end of the band in more detail.

How to read the regional table

Every figure in the table and the quick answer comes from AMVIA's published connectivity corpus: the aggregate of real quotes issued to UK businesses, with no customer identifiers, every cell built from at least five quotes, and each figure stamped with its as-of date and sample size. These are quoted amounts, which is the view you face when you go to market. The won-only view, which is closer to a transacted price, is published separately on the UK Business Connectivity Pricing Index and the two are never blended. The methodology page sets out how cells are built, rolled up and suppressed. A region whose sample for the band is under the publishing threshold shows the UK-wide roll-up and is labelled as such; nothing is interpolated.

Lead times and one-off costs

Delivered circuits above 1Gbps take slightly longer from order to live than 1Gbps circuits in the corpus, and the slowest tenth takes over six months. The reasons are physical: a multi-gigabit order is likelier to need new fibre into the building, new optics at the exchange or a wayleave for a second entry point. Start the order before the lease is signed if you can, and plan the equipment refresh in parallel. Installation is normally waived on a 36-month term. The one-off cost to plan for is the excess construction charge where fibre must be built; the corpus distribution for ECCs is on the excess construction charges page, and multi-gigabit orders at sites without existing high-capacity fibre are the orders most exposed to its upper tail. Every carrier should survey the address before you commit to any of them. Sites at this scale should also design in backup connectivity on a physically separate network from the start.

How to get the best multi-gigabit price

Order the bearer for three years out and the committed rate for today, fix the upgrade steps in the contract, take the 36-month term, and compare every carrier with 10Gbps-capable fibre at the postcode rather than the one already in the building. AMVIA runs that comparison across BT Openreach, Virgin Media Business, CityFibre, Zayo and the regional networks, surfaces construction charges before you commit, and manages the install and the equipment hand-off end to end. Start with your postcode and a tailored quote typically lands within 24 hours. For a wider view of the market, the UK leased line providers comparison sets out where each carrier is strong.