FTTC vs fibre broadband vs leased lines?

Hi there,

I'm trying to find out some unbiased (not from the seller) info about upgrading from standard broadband (3 bonded lines at 20mb upload) to either fibre, FTTC, or BTNet leased lines. Mostly to support general internet use and a few cloud-based services (email, CRM, data back-up).

So far I have details from just BT on pricing, speeds, reliability and service level, plus lead times. Is there a way to find out any "cons" of each? My hunting via google hasn't pulled up much in terms of discussions/advice by others having to decide between these for an SME, beyond consideration of static IPs and contract checking.

Thanks for any advice in advance!

Fibre - not sure what you mean? What product? Both FTTC and leased lines are potentially fibre - "fibre" in itself is not a product.

FTTC - low(ish) cost, contended service

Leased line - high(er) cost, usually uncontended services, usually higher service levels for faults

Leased line is generally going to be best - but is also likely to be costly (although how good depends on exactly what product and service levels you are buying - many flavours of leased lines).

There are so many contract and technology variations for leased line (and contract variations for FTTC) that direct comparisons can only be done with specific product details. A high end FTTC service may actually provide better support than a very cheap leased line service.

Ah I'm quoting from BT - as in fibre broadband, that isn't FTTC etc., via cabinet to exchange. FTTC I thought was uncontended as it's our own fibre line direct to the exchange.

Thanks for the summary, and what to check for. Mostly wish to find out if there's something to be aware of that I'm not, currently.

I think you've got your terminology mixed up.

FTTC is a contended service. It is delivered by providing fibre to a cabinet and then uses the existing copper from the cabinet to the house. It is a shared service right the way out to the Internet. FTTC connects at slower speeds the further you are from the cabinet.

FTTP is also a contended service. This is provided in less than 1% of the UK and is not provided where there is FTTC (well, nearly always not). If you have FTTC available you won't have FTTP available. FTTP has high top speeds available than FTTC and is not distance limited.

FTTPoD - this is an extension of FTTC where you can get the fibre extended to the house. At that point it becomes the same product as FTTP. But, it is expensive to get installed, has a 3 year minimum contract on the top FTTP product (330Mb/s) and is only available in some areas. BT have currently got a hold on FTTPoD so can't be ordered.

Leased Line could be copper or fibre. Most leased line services are uncontended but not all. Leased Line covers a very large number of different products.

Fibre broadband is a catch all and means nothing outside of marketing material.

You need to consider how much down time you can accept. At present with three bonded lines, loss of one is not catastrophic as you would still have some reduced capability.

You MUST go for a Business grade service - don't try to cut costs by using a consumer service. Is next business day an acceptable response time for faults to be resolved or would you require a 4 hour response?

An excellent summary .

Just one thought, that you haven't covered - I wonder if his "fibre broadband" is really VM cable he is thinking of?

How much would you stand to lose if the service was broken for 2 days?

If talking large sums of money, then really the only option is a leased line, as you can get guaranteed access to engineers and teams to fix the connection. If it is in to the £1000's of pounds a day then time to look at diverse routing, or consider how the business operation runs, i.e. move more of the critical operation so it is running in the data centre and NOT reliant on connection to the office.

If going to bond then you can increase the redundancy, by having the primary leased line backed up on by an FTTC based service. A third backup such as ADSL2+ or a mobile service can be a lot slower than the two prime choices, but in terms of keeping a business running this would allow you to operate customer contact via emails etc.

Hi, and thanks for your replies! I've been speaking with someone who refers to BT Infinity as "fibre broadband" so that's what I've been calling it. I have however been somehow thinking FTTC meant direct to exchange, despite "cabinet" being in the name :facepalm: - thanks for clearing that up.

I have prices for BT Infinity, "FTTC" as a 10mb (up/down) uncontended line, and then BTnet leased lines as 10/20/50mb over 100mb line. Uncontended, full SLA too. Not sure if copper/fibre though.

Plan was originally for 4 bonded lines, 1 x ADSL2+ and 3 x BT infinity (with additional 4G dongle as a small measure of emergency connectivity.) However our nearest cabinet is taking a while to be upgraded, and there is minimal tolerance for downtime - aiming for a few hours at absolute worst, better if we can not have that at all. (Don't worry, consumer/non-business services are not even a consideration.) Currently could have a 6hr response/fix time on BT Infinity or the uncontended FTTC option BT gave me, need to confirm for leased lines.

It's a small office (30 - 40 users), with no data centre but increasing dependence on cloud-based systems. Thanks for the heads up on diverse routing, I wished to look at options for internet + phone traffic in case of local exchange outage (which we have had once before in recent years.)

I think I may need to work out a clearer spec of redundancy, fix/response times and speed requirements to work out what would suit us best, and look to do this with some thought for our phone system too (looking to move that to BT too, and have some redundancy).

Thank you for the advice on leased line backed up by FTTC etc., though, I hadn't thought of combining those.

A very important point is to talk to different providers to ensure sales people are not talking rubbish or promising better when really its just a more creative use of wording.

One provider that has cropped up for redundancy and resiliency is http://www.timico.co.uk/services/managed-networks-co...

NOTE: The FTTC 10 Mbps up and down will have speeds dependent on your distance to the street cabinet, and researching that before committing is VERY important. It may be less worth the money is you end up with a 10 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up connection.

Yes, that is what I was looking to do too, only really spoken to BT so far. They're currently thought of as a better option, as we've had delays in fixing our phone lines of late courtesy of requests being relayed through a slow third party first. Depends on the company and SLA though I assume (current one was set up before my involvement with such.)

I'll take a look at Timico, thanks for that too. Noted about the FTTC speeds!

In reply to a post by ian72:

I think you've got your terminology mixed up.

I think you have your horizon set to limited - limited to the standard way that products are built by retail ISP.s

FTTC is a contended service. It is delivered by providing fibre to a cabinet and then uses the existing copper from the cabinet to the house. It is a shared service right the way out to the Internet. FTTC connects at slower speeds the further you are from the cabinet.

The FTTC portion of the total service is not contended.

If you buy a service that is made of an FTTC connection in the access network, and a contended WBMC backhaul to the ISP, then you are right. But the contention comes from the shared backhaul, not the FTTC component.

However, you can buy leased line services that incorporate FTTC in the access network, but with uncontended backhaul. This makes it work just like a leased line.

I have seen an example from Spitfire, where they build bi-directional leased lines at 2Mbps, 10Mbps and 20Mbps. These speeds are uncontended through the core network, but are then delivered within the access network using FTTC.

They know the service as "GEA Ethernet": http://www.spitfire.co.uk/ethernet_gea_new.shtml?hea...

For those wondering why they don't offer higher uncontended speeds, this is because the guarantees are 15 Mbps and 30 Mbps across the fibre element that Openreach run back to the exchange where it will join the eventual backhaul network.

In reply to a post by bandinfo:

Hi, and thanks for your replies! I've been speaking with someone who refers to BT Infinity as "fibre broadband" so that's what I've been calling it. I have however been somehow thinking FTTC meant direct to exchange, despite "cabinet" being in the name :facepalm: - thanks for clearing that up.

To a lot of people, "fibre broadband" really means retail internet access using a fibre-based product. Leased lines can be for internet access, but they can be site-to-site too.

Looking at the Spitfire page I linked previously (I have no link with spitfire, have never used them, but I find their pages helpful), I can see that they have 3 main grouping for leased lines:

- One is generically labelled "Fibre Ethernet" with packages from 10Mbps. I guess these bring dedicated fibre to your building. This kind of fibre is entirely unrelated to the fibre being built as part of the FTTC, FTTP and FTTPoD rollouts (which fall under a new label of "GEA" or "Generic Ethernet Access")
http://www.spitfire.co.uk/ethernet_fibre.shtml

- One is generically labelled "Copper Ethernet", but otherwise known as "Ethernet in the First Mile" or EFM. These seem to bond together copper - possibly a *lot* of copper - to get the speed you want.
http://www.spitfire.co.uk/Ethernet_efm.shtml?headerb...

- The new one is generically labelled "GEA Ethernet", and makes use of one of the GEA products for the access network component. Rather than being used in the way retail ISPs do (asynchronous speeds, contended backhaul), the "GEA Ethernet" products use uncontended backhaul and synchronous speeds in the access network (that match the upload speed).
http://www.spitfire.co.uk/ethernet_gea_new.shtml?hea...

In essence, this last option purchases a GEA circuit from Openreach, and links it to uncontended backhaul - which may be part of BT's core network, but might be a different backhaul provider.

I have prices for BT Infinity, "FTTC" as a 10mb (up/down) uncontended line, and then BTnet leased lines as 10/20/50mb over 100mb line. Uncontended, full SLA too. Not sure if copper/fibre though.

The spitfire range allows for 2/10/20 speeds over EFM (copper), 2/10/20 speeds over "GEA Ethernet" (FTTC, copper/fibre hybrid) at prices lower than EFM, and 10/100/1000 speeds over fibre.

It sounds like you've been offered a choice of "GEA Ethernet" or "Fibre Ethernet".

Plan was originally for 4 bonded lines, 1 x ADSL2+ and 3 x BT infinity (with additional 4G dongle as a small measure of emergency connectivity.)

Is that to one site? With the ADSL connection as backup, or as a load-balanced partner?

However our nearest cabinet is taking a while to be upgraded,

I guess that takes all the GEA-based options out, unless you are prepared to wait.

and there is minimal tolerance for downtime - aiming for a few hours at absolute worst, better if we can not have that at all. (Don't worry, consumer/non-business services are not even a consideration.) Currently could have a 6hr response/fix time on BT Infinity or the uncontended FTTC option BT gave me, need to confirm for leased lines.

If you want to look for competitors, the best thing to search for is either "GEA leased line" or "GEA ethernet leased line". BTnet comes up as one of the options, I note, but you'll probably find other providers to check on their SLA terms.

Thanks for the heads up on diverse routing, I wished to look at options for internet + phone traffic in case of local exchange outage (which we have had once before in recent years.)

You might find that an ADSL2+ line might act as this - because your cabinet might have its fibre connection taken to a different exchange head-end.

Otherwise, 4G might provide a reasonable emergency backup - but it depends on how their backhaul is wired up.

Beyond those two, diverse routing is probably not a cheap option.

It's certainly worth the original poster talking to a selection of business orientated ISPs. Zen can offer uncontended bandwidth delivered over GEA-FTTx (Openreach FTTC or FTTP), EFM (a bunch of copper pairs) or leased lines (dedicated copper or fibre circuit with a SLA). There are many other options in the marketplace.