Leased line

Hi guys, easy on me as this is my first. Not sure exactly which forum to place this so here goes:
I'm in an SME which is currently on VM Voom at 350/20. We're not happy with the upload speed, latency and jitter.
So I've tried to get quotes on a leased line. Plenty companies quoting silly prices but the norm seems to be about £300 for 200/200. Cheapest I got so far was Daisy at £255, and TalkTalk offered £350 for a gig.
Zen is really annoying as we're less than a mile from their HQ but they won't go down.
Does anyone have any idea if any company could get it down to £200 or below? I'm not asking for commercial solicitation, I need real world experience from someone who looked into getting such a connection.
We've got no FTTP or G.Fast in the area, and OR, VM and TT are fibre tail providers in this area apparently.
Thanks everyone I really appreciate

You might want to see if M247.com can offer something. They are suggesting £200 for a leased line at Zen's postcode. I haven't had first hand experience of them but one of my clients uses them.

Have you had a look at linebroker.co.uk ?

TalkTalk Business' offer of £350/m for 1 Gig sounds attractive . Have you asked them for for lower tier pricing?

I think your best chance of getting under £200 is Virgin's DIA Lite product, but it's not great value compared to what you can get if you can spend a bit more

https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/connectivity/i...

Edited by jpm (Thu 30-Apr-20 16:08:31)

300 for a 200meg leased line isn't a silly price how much was you expecting it to cost?

The connection would be to the exchange not the HQ btw so the location of that doesn't affect the pricing.

£350 for a gig is a very good price considering TT have to still use Openreach's ripoff EAD.

Spitfire don't hide their prices, and while cheap, not the cheapest, so you get an idea what 'normal' prices are.

If you're in CityFibre areas, they also have a product called Ethernet Flex which is 200mbps guaranteed with burst to a gig for £199.

They quoted us £350 for 200 and £400 for 300, so as always, bait and switch

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

You might want to see if M247.com can offer something. They are suggesting £200 for a leased line at Zen's postcode. I haven't had first hand experience of them but one of my clients uses them.

Edited by deleted (Thu 30-Apr-20 17:21:09)

In reply to a post by rowter:

300 for a 200meg leased line isn't a silly price how much was you expecting it to cost?

The connection would be to the exchange not the HQ btw so the location of that doesn't affect the pricing.

I meant some of the other prices I got, like £475 for 200meg and £625 for a gig. I was hoping to get it down towards £200 but it looks like I won't get it much lower.
I know they were going to connect me to the exchange POP but they also offer colocation at their HQ for pretty cheap, so I'm even wondering if I could just get the fibre laid it would be peanuts altogether. An upfront cost is worth it for us if it brings down the price, plus there is the Gigabit voucher scheme

In reply to a post by zzing123:

£350 for a gig is a very good price considering TT have to still use Openreach's ripoff EAD.

Spitfire don't hide their prices, and while cheap, not the cheapest, so you get an idea what 'normal' prices are.

If you're in CityFibre areas, they also have a product called Ethernet Flex which is 200mbps guaranteed with burst to a gig for £199.

Spitfire: I love them simply because they are so upfront, every other company justs makes up prices as they go, depending on how much they think you will pay. Once I've got my cheapest quote I might try calling them to see if they'll match.

I saw the Flex but CityFibre aren't around here. I called them and they sent me to Entanet, who haven't responded yet. Daisy also resell it, but they told me it was unavailable.

If there is FTTC in the area, you could check if FTTPoD is available and pay the install charges to get the work done. The monthly prices are cheaper than a leased line but it may cost more to provision than a leased line. I know that cerberus networks and Fluid One offer this.

You could also apply for a community funded solution with Openreach who will draw up the excess charges. Once the build is complete you have a choice to go with any FTTP provider rather than select one with FTTPoD. https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/community-...

It might also be worth getting bonded VDSL which again would be cheaper than a leased line. Cerberus offer this aswell.

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

If there is FTTC in the area, you could check if FTTPoD is available and pay the install charges to get the work done.

The main problem with FTTPoD is that there's no guarantee how long it will take to get installed. If you place a leased line order, you'll probably have it up and running within 3 months. With FTTPoD you'll be very lucky if it's going within 6 months, and 18 months is not unknown.

The company I work for uses Spitfire for their leased line. They occasionally have free installation deals for new customers.

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

If there is FTTC in the area, you could check if FTTPoD is available and pay the install charges to get the work done. The monthly prices are cheaper than a leased line but it may cost more to provision than a leased line. I know that cerberus networks and Fluid One offer this.

You could also apply for a community funded solution with Openreach who will draw up the excess charges. Once the build is complete you have a choice to go with any FTTP provider rather than select one with FTTPoD. https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/community-...

It might also be worth getting bonded VDSL which again would be cheaper than a leased line. Cerberus offer this aswell.

To add: FTTP on Demand will usually work out cheaper over time but that time period depends on the initial cost which could be as low as a few thousand pounds or up to £40K, which is decided by how hard or easy your install will be. Allow at least 12 months for installation and the first 12 months after that you will be on a 30 Meg upload (300/30 product), although all your jitter issues will be gone.

After 12 months you can switch to different speeds and/or supplier. You could I suspect buy out the first 12 months of that initial contract (~£1440) and move to a faster product straight away, but all adding to the costs.

Given the aim is to have most people connected up to FTTP in the years to come you might find a leased line until such time FTTP arrives at your home for free may work out overall cheaper, and certainly would be delivered quicker. I think with leased lines you need to sign a 3-year contract; the gamble of course is FTTP might turn up in 12-18 months, or it might not turn up for 10 years. Without knowing the future, it is all a gamble.

I'm paying £345/month for 1Gig with Vaioni on a 1 year contract. Signed the contract in October, there were some provider changes in my area and had to restart the process in January. Finally went live this week on Wednesday.

In reply to a post by E300:

I think with leased lines you need to sign a 3-year contract;

Only if you want free installation. You can take out leased lines on 12-24 month contracts if you're willing to pay the install costs - the shorter the min term, the greater the one off install costs.

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-May-20 09:53:08)

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

If there is FTTC in the area, you could check if FTTPoD is available and pay the install charges to get the work done. The monthly prices are cheaper than a leased line but it may cost more to provision than a leased line. I know that cerberus networks and Fluid One offer this.

You could also apply for a community funded solution with Openreach who will draw up the excess charges. Once the build is complete you have a choice to go with any FTTP provider rather than select one with FTTPoD. https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/community-...

It might also be worth getting bonded VDSL which again would be cheaper than a leased line. Cerberus offer this aswell.

I asked Cerberus, they eventually came back with "Unable to quote, must get a survey", they think it's because it's a multi-tenant building. They did say we are 600-800m from the agg node, no idea what sort of cost that would be though.
Bonded VDSL you'd need loads of them to get a good upload speed, and after about 3 it's not cost effective.

In reply to a post by roundrobin:

I'm paying £345/month for 1Gig with Vaioni on a 1 year contract. Signed the contract in October, there were some provider changes in my area and had to restart the process in January. Finally went live this week on Wednesday.

I hadn't asked them because they just looked like a small reseller, maybe I was wrong. Are they cheap generally?

In reply to a post by techeasy:

I asked Cerberus, they eventually came back with "Unable to quote, must get a survey", they think it's because it's a multi-tenant building.

If so, unfortunately FTTPoD is not an option.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/ultra...

"We recommend that you discuss the property type with your end customer to establish whether their premises is a multi-dwelling unit (MDU), i.e. apartment block, or multi-occupancy business unit (MOU), prior to the order being raised. Any orders received for MDUs or MOUs will be rejected."

How multi-tenanted is the building? It might be something that Hyperoptic would be interested in serving.

They also have their own network too I believe. I'm not sure if they are always the cheapest. Second cheapest option was AMVIA. TTB did have an offer for 1G for the price of 300Mbps but my area wasn't eligible.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

If there is FTTC in the area, you could check if FTTPoD is available and pay the install charges to get the work done.

The main problem with FTTPoD is that there's no guarantee how long it will take to get installed. If you place a leased line order, you'll probably have it up and running within 3 months. With FTTPoD you'll be very lucky if it's going within 6 months, and 18 months is not unknown.

I have seen leased line installs that have taken 2 years to complete. Average lead time is 90 days but you are correct in that FTTP takes longer.

BT Enterprise is now providing 1gbps bearers to all customers no matter the speed without a higher price. Might be worth checking with them but they are normally more expensive than others. Also, remember that dropping the managed router and going "Wires Only" can save some money.

Hey there! Feel free to email us the address on [email protected] and the team in charge of leased line connections will gladly advise you further!

The basic issue with leased lines is Openreach's pricing. An EAD Enable/1G will cost a minimum of £1,782/year (£148.50/mth). 'Enable' are lines without Openreach junk tainting your rack (but usually a router supplied by the ISP instead). Because ISPs have to also buy the guaranteed bandwidth from the backhaul, which themselves are also using either EAD or BES services from Openreach and/or transit providers, then in effect the minimum leased line price is technically double the Openreach EAD rate, so really finding anything below £3,564/yr (£297/mth), means that you have to either find an alt-net like CityFibre or Virgin, an ISP that will spread profit from other connections on a fatter pipe (Hyperoptic). Put like that, you see how good TalkTalk's quote is, actually. There's very little fat on it.

In any case, the biggest obstacle remains BT's protectionism.

A few remarks:

EADs are a regulated product. They can neither be priced excessively high or excessively low. One for obvious reasons, the other to ensure that alternative networks can compete.

Speak with Ofcom on this one.

Given Openreach have to charge everyone the same price for an EAD I'm not sure how the pricing is 'protectionism'. Openreach are quite incapable of protectionism. Indeed high EAD prices incentivise alternative networks, potentially using DPA, to build themselves. Really low EAD prices would be protectionism as they'd dissuade alternative network build.

CPs/ISPs do not buy guaranteed bandwidth for each leased line as far as backhaul goes.

Transit and backhaul are different things.

BES don't exist anymore. Openreach stopped sale of them in 2011 and support of them earlier this year.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

A few remarks:

EADs are a regulated product. They can neither be priced excessively high or excessively low. One for obvious reasons, the other to ensure that alternative networks can compete.

Speak with Ofcom on this one.

Given Openreach have to charge everyone the same price for an EAD I'm not sure how the pricing is 'protectionism'. Openreach are quite incapable of protectionism. Indeed high EAD prices incentivise alternative networks, potentially using DPA, to build themselves. Really low EAD prices would be protectionism as they'd dissuade alternative network build.

CPs/ISPs do not buy guaranteed bandwidth for each leased line as far as backhaul goes.

Transit and backhaul are different things.

BES don't exist anymore. Openreach stopped sale of them in 2011 and support of them earlier this year.

Yes, backhaul is basically transmitting over their own lines to their datacentres and POPs, transit would be to other networks they do not peer with.

I saw the Openreach prices, and yes, TT at 1g is great but not sure if we have the money for it.

To me I see BT protectionism as them being the only provider of EAD in the majority of areas. Equally they will not provide it as a dark fibre line. Bear in mind that I don't need Openreach's equipment as quite a few providers have POPs and their own backhaul at my exchange. All I need is the actual line, and Openreach charge an arm and a leg.

In reply to a post by Hyperoptic_CS:

Hey there! Feel free to email us the address on [email protected] and the team in charge of leased line connections will gladly advise you further!

I tried you on chat already and was just advised to register interest, even though I said I wanted a leased line, not shared.
Considering you're advertising 100mb at £350/month, what makes you think you're going to come close in terms of a competitive quote to what I've had already? I wanted to know who was cheap, not have salespeople badger me with ridiculous prices.

Unfortunately, it will most likely always stay like this. BT built the infrastructure so they get to keep it and it should have been stopped by the government early on.
I personally don't think EAD is overpriced for the stability and bandwidth you get. Your best bet is to get bids from different ISP's and bargain with them. From experience, £250-350 is the general price for 100mbps on 100mbps bearer (price can differ depending on the A End and route distance).
EFM is also an option but would recommend going with fibre if you can. I would steer clear from EoFTTC as max speed is 18mbps.

The more relevant price list is the one for EAD Local Access, and there is no requirement for providers to purchase backhaul from anybody - lots of the larger ones are on-net at BT exchanges which is why providers like TalkTalk can be so competitive.

It's also not been my experience that Virgin Media circuits are cheaper than Openreach to any significant degree.

Techeasy

To me I see BT protectionism as them being the only provider of EAD in the majority of areas

This is why the price is so high as OFCOM basically set the prices so that others can undercut OR. OR have floors on all these prices that are set by OFCOM as well as ceilings to protect rural (expensive to provide) areas, so really they have no flexibility on price at all.

They also have to provide duct and pole access at close to cost prices to any provider that wants to build their own network, usually providers only want to do this when they have a contract they can make money on a long term basis.

So lined a bunch of quotes, but I'm trying to shortlist them and I can't find much reports online re reliability and customer service. Main priorities are actual time to fix (not the SLA, that's just money back), and how easy they are to make changes.
Is it better to go for a big reliable (?) provider like GTT or Vodafone using a BT tail, maybe TalkTalk with their own tail, or a small local one like Spitfire I can prod into getting things done, or maybe a reseller like Amvia who might have more clout? If anyone has any real-life experience (for Ethernet services) with any of these I'd love to know.

SSE (own and Sky's backhaul, BT and Sky tails)
Vodafone (big network, BT tails)
GTT (big network, BT tails)
TalkTalk (own network and tails)
Daisy (resells CityFibre and TT)
Zen (small own network, BT tails)
Spitfire (ditto)
Amvia (reseller)

Also Exascale with a small network and not sure who has the tails

When you say "tails" are you referring to the actual connection into the customer premises? I'm not aware of TalkTalk doing their own, they use Openreach EAD. Virgin Media and Colt will also install their own cables, and other providers can use these as well.

It's possible to buy a connection from an ISP that doesn't have presence in the part of the country you are in, so they will e.g. use TalkTalk to get the traffic from the exchange back to their network, and TalkTalk will use Openreach to get the traffic from the customer to the exchange. This is what's going to have the impact on fix times and service quality in my experience - if your provider have to raise a ticket with TalkTalk who then speak to Openreach to work out that there's a fibre break then this is going to take more time and introduce more opportunities for mistakes than if your provider own the equipment at the exchange where your EAD terminates, can do their own troubleshooting and can raise tickets to Openreach directly.

In reply to a post by techeasy:

Main priorities are actual time to fix (not the SLA, that's just money back),

A leased line SLA does cover fault fix times. Basically the more you pay, the better the fix time SLA - this can be as quick as 2 hrs but expect to pay big money for this. I would stick with the major providers such as Vodafone, BT, TalkTalk Business, SSE, Virgin etc rather than resellers because in the event of any major issue, I would prefer to deal direct with the CP rather than a reseller, ie cut out the middle man.

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-Jun-20 16:46:13)

In reply to a post by jpm:

When you say "tails" are you referring to the actual connection into the customer premises? I'm not aware of TalkTalk doing their own, they use Openreach EAD. Virgin Media and Colt will also install their own cables, and other providers can use these as well.

It's possible to buy a connection from an ISP that doesn't have presence in the part of the country you are in, so they will e.g. use TalkTalk to get the traffic from the exchange back to their network, and TalkTalk will use Openreach to get the traffic from the customer to the exchange. This is what's going to have the impact on fix times and service quality in my experience - if your provider have to raise a ticket with TalkTalk who then speak to Openreach to work out that there's a fibre break then this is going to take more time and introduce more opportunities for mistakes than if your provider own the equipment at the exchange where your EAD terminates, can do their own troubleshooting and can raise tickets to Openreach directly.

Yes I was saying that. TT claimed they had fibre in the building and I think I've heard they do have tails, but maybe it was just BT or Virgin which already have fibre in the building. Colt are miles away, Vodafone I think are 50 meters away.
You hit on precisely my concern re tickets, but we've had bad experience with BT and Virgin in the past, in particular Virgin on another line where they passed us from pillar to post just to make a simple change to the router. It's another reason I want to go wires only, we can do the routing ourselves.

How do I work out who actually has equipment in the exchange? It's Rochdale LCROC if that helps.

In reply to a post by Highland76:

In reply to a post by techeasy:

Main priorities are actual time to fix (not the SLA, that's just money back),

A leased line SLA does cover fault fix times. Basically the more you pay, the better the fix time SLA - this can be as quick as 2 hrs but expect to pay big money for this.

SLA is all very nice but it's not going to cost them massively if they miss it by a few hours. And not everything is covered by an SLA. The question is how long do they ACTUALLY take to fix things, based on experience?

I know it can sound repetitive but if you're doing something where uptime is critical then you should try and implement network resilience rather than trying to find the best SLA going. There's so much stuff that is out of the control of network operators and you might end up with your connection down and the network provider isn't allowed to access their infrastructure for safety reasons, or maybe it's a crime scene that can't be disturbed.

I think you have to ask providers if they have presence in the exchange that you're connecting to, or whether they are using a third party wholesale provider to reach you. They should be very open with answering this question, if they aren't then don't give them your business.

SSE are on-net at Rochdale, which matches what they have told you

https://ssetelecoms.com/about-sse/our-network/intera...

Obviously TalkTalk are as well, BT will most likely be there as well.

Edited by jpm (Wed 17-Jun-20 20:12:58)

In reply to a post by jpm:

I know it can sound repetitive but if you're doing something where uptime is critical then you should try and implement network resilience rather than trying to find the best SLA going.

Agreed. In this case I would suggest:

1. Keep the existing VM circuit as a backup
2. Take a leased line from someone who definitely does *not* use VM tails or backhaul. Get them to write this into the contract.
3. If possible, have the new circuit take a different route into the building than the VM one (this is likely if you use Openreach and they have their own duct)
4. Have a router with two WAN ports and does automatic failover. Or better: two routers with VRRP between them.

It *is* possible to get highly-redundant leased lines where they bring in two fibres via two entry points to two different exchanges - but they cost an arm and a leg. I'm sure you can cope with running on Virgin for a few hours once every few years.

You can't really choose your provider based on expected time to repair. *Any* of the providers *could* be hit with a major incident.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

2. Take a leased line from someone who definitely does *not* use VM tails or backhaul. Get them to write this into the contract.

You can't really choose your provider based on expected time to repair. *Any* of the providers *could* be hit with a major incident.

But are BT any better?

The other circuit in the building is a VM leased line which I sometimes help that company with as a favour, and they had it go down late on a Sunday evening. VM's 24/7 fault line wouldn't answer the phone or live chat til 8am the next morning, then 4hrs to actually fix it. And anytime they want even the slightest little change to the router settings, it's a few weeks effort just to get them to even acknowledge the request. At the end of the day they're not a big cutomer for VM so they don't care. I woudn't touch them myself.

Question is: do the other companies who use VM and BT tails have more clout to get things fixed immediately, or are they just passing the buck around when things go wrong because it's not their tail? And do they get tickets sorted quicker? I don't know because I have no experience. If anyone has specific experience of different providers I'd love to know.

The point is, keep the existing circuit from VM and take another circuit from a different provider. If they are independent then the chances of both failing at once are very slim.

In reply to a post by techeasy:

So lined a bunch of quotes, but I'm trying to shortlist them and I can't find much reports online re reliability and customer service. Main priorities are actual time to fix (not the SLA, that's just money back), and how easy they are to make changes.
Is it better to go for a big reliable (?) provider like GTT or Vodafone using a BT tail, maybe TalkTalk with their own tail, or a small local one like Spitfire I can prod into getting things done, or maybe a reseller like Amvia who might have more clout? If anyone has any real-life experience (for Ethernet services) with any of these I'd love to know.

SSE (own and Sky's backhaul, BT and Sky tails)
Vodafone (big network, BT tails)
GTT (big network, BT tails)
TalkTalk (own network and tails)
Daisy (resells CityFibre and TT)
Zen (small own network, BT tails)
Spitfire (ditto)
Amvia (reseller)

I can’t claim to know all of the lingo regarding leased lines. But IF tails means the final fibre going into a building Sky don’t have that and neither do TalkTalk. They’d both be using Openreach.

In reply to a post by techeasy:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

2. Take a leased line from someone who definitely does *not* use VM tails or backhaul. Get them to write this into the contract.

You can't really choose your provider based on expected time to repair. *Any* of the providers *could* be hit with a major incident.

But are BT any better?

Let’s use the right company names here so that people can answer your questions properly. If you mean Openreach then say Openreach, if you mean BT (the ISP) then say BT. Throughout your posts you’ve said BT.

Edited by deleted (Sat 20-Jun-20 12:43:29)

In reply to a post by Icaras:

I can’t claim to know all of the lingo regarding leased lines. But IF tails means the final fibre going into a building Sky don’t have that and neither do TalkTalk. They’d both be using Openreach.

Let’s use the right company names here so that people can answer your questions properly. If you mean Openreach then say Openreach, if you mean BT (the ISP) then say BT. Throughout your posts you’ve said BT.

Sorry, you're right, I meant Openreach EAD line. When I spoke to TT they seemed to imply it was their own line, but seems that's not right.


I suppose my question really boils down to: am I better contracting from a reseller or a smaller off-net network, where they may be more responsive, or directly from a big supplier who I can hold to account for the performance of their directly-owned line?

I got a cracking quote from SSE for 1Gb, even better than TT. But can't find much info on how good their network and CS is. Does anyone have any idea?

I've been given now a higher budget, and I was thinking whether to go for full resilient fibre (R02), but it's actually working out more than double a normal line. I'm still dithering about whether to rely on the VM cable connection, bearing in mind hopefully a move to DOCSIS 3.1 and 1Gb. But not sure if there's any co-dependance on Openreach anywhere, or for that matter whether SSE or TT use VM's backhaul.

In reply to a post by techeasy:

I got a cracking quote from SSE for 1Gb, even better than TT. But can't find much info on how good their network and CS is. Does anyone have any idea?

If you're going for the full 1Gb and won't need any changes, you should be good. The only part where SSE seems to fall down in our experience is where you need changes made, i.e regrades which can take an awfully long time compared to others.

Matt