Do I Need a Leased Line?
What is a leased line exactly? Why would a business need to make such an investment? You may have these questions regarding leased line and your business, so in this post all factors will be taken into consideration to determine if leased line is right for your business.
Leased lines primarily benefit businesses that rely on either the internet, or on connectivity to servers within their own network, or both. Broadband is reliable enough for home usage, or for local businesses or most small-medium sized call centres, but what should you do if your business is in something like collocation, where any downtime means you lose money?
Pros
A leased line is guaranteed, dedicated (internet) connection, so any outages are nearly always fixed within hours or you are compensated for the downtime. Unlike broadband, leased lines are future proof, in the sense that you can upgrade your speeds very easily if you need to, and you don’t have to have any new infrastructure installed. Another great benefit to leased lines is that they have what is known as “symmetical speeds”, referring to the identical upload and download speeds. With broadband, upload speeds are often sacrificed to get better download speeds, but sometimes this is unacceptable for a business. Leased lines enabled you to send and receive data fast. Leased lines are dedicated and uncontested, so your bandwidth would not be affected by other users (because you are the only user of your leased line). You do not have to purchase a 10Gbps leased line, however. You could get a 30Mbps line if that was sufficient, but still receive all the benefits that come with an uncontested, SLA-backed, dedicated line.
Resilience
Perhaps the leased line’s biggest benefit is its resilience options. It is possible to have a leased line set up where you can get 100% uptime. Two circuits are installed, and if one goes down for any reason, the backup is switched to in 5 seconds and you do not have to restart any hardware. If you have a serviced office business, a collocation service, or provide any service where totally uninterrupted connectivity is paramount to its success, then resilience is your only option.
If you rely on a VPN or provide a VPN service, back up data frequently, or provide or use VoIP, work in healthcare or education, or provide hosting, a leased line will often save you money in the long run by reducing customer complaints, minimising (and sometimes fully removing!) downtime, and keeping investors satisfied.
Cons
There are some downsides to leased lines. They can take up to 4 months to install. Leased lines have to be physically built into your business premises, so this will take some time. There are many types of leased line, which all offer you the same thing, but use different technologies, some of which can cut down installation times to around 2 months. Leased lines are much more expensive than a broadband connection is. They can also have very high installation fees in the thousands. However, with Ballscoigne all installation fees are waived in our 3 year contracts.
If you are still unsure as to which type of connection is best for you – broadband or leased line – Ballscoigne is ready to help you make the best decision for your business. You can call or email us by using our Contact Us page, and we will help you every step of the way.
Recent Comments