FTTP vs Leased Line (I have both and need some advice)

So I am technical but know very little about all this kind of networking, this seems like the most knowledgable place.

3 years ago I had a 100mb lease lined installed as the ASDL here was pretty poor (Canterbury). The line has been great, served its purpose. I had an ASDL backup line running as well, BT Business. I load balance across a firewalla and everything has been fine.

I recently upgraded the ASDL to FTTP so there's a BT pole outside and now I have two lines going to it, one is the leased line and the other the BT FTTP. The FTTP is 900/100 and so far those rates seem solid.

Soon I am out of contract on the leased line and I am trying to work out what to do.

Do I keep a leased line, negotiate a better rate for it or do I abandon it and get another FTTP installed or something from a different provider.

I don't know how reliable the FTTP will be, I don't know if I'm going to see contention on it. The OR engineers said I shouldn't because it's a line to the exchange. Both of these lines are going to the same pole. When I had the leased line installed OR had to dig up the road and I assume what they laid then is the basis for FTTP for the area now.

I have you fibre claiming they will be in the area and also I have seen Virgin Media knocking around.

If I was to close the leased line and get another FTTP then I would ideally like a different provider but then of course it may all be the OR network.

I understand I may be able to swap leased line suppliers too so long as the new supplier is on OR, I don't know what's involved with that and whether it is feasible.

So I am looking for some advice about whether I will see any real redundancy with a second FTTP. Whether a different supplier would give an actual different service and whether the idea of loosing the leased line means reliability will be a huge issue for me?

This is all work and I need the line. Between the main line and backup I have been running 24/7 for 3 years. Yes the leased line has been down a handful of times and the ADSL was down quite a lot. But together it's been okay.

Kindest and thanks in advance
Paul

Some with more experience will chip in with the leased line situation.

Firstly thought any fttp connection goes to a headend exchange were the olt is and not to your local exchange (unless its a head end exchange).

I'd personally either renegotiate the price for the leased line or go with another fttp network. How much bandwidth do you need if one line goes down or would like full load balancing - ie 900 and 900 ?

If you get say another OR based fttp line you will only be contenting yourself. There is contention on a fttp pon - up to 30 properties. But a dynamic contention.

What do you use your internet connection for? I doubt that you require the leased line and you'd probably be served fine with your FTTP and adding a 5G/4G failover to that service for now, and FTTP from a second physical network (YouFibre, Virgin) when available.

FTTP and leased line aka Direct Internet Access (DIA) / Ethernet service are similar but still different beasts.

There are factors beyond 'speed' which could be a key differentiator, depending on what it is you're doing with the service. For example, in broad terms, a leased line will have a better service level agreement, faster response time and repair times. Expect 24/7 monitoring and the ability to call in a problem at 3am with someone at the door by 8am. You also are on an un-contended service, at least in the 'last mile'. So long as your leased line provider has a well designed, implemented and managed network core - the service ought to performant, as low latency as nature allows and not congested.

The leased circuit will also be symmetric in terms of bandwidth - possibly something you wont really notice at 100 Mbps but could be a deal breaker if you are used to / need a higher speed upload - then you can currently get with an Openreach-based FTTP service, which for all intents and purposes tops out at c. 110 Mbps (yes there are ~220 Mbps upload variants, but very few ISP offer them as they are extremely expensive, for FTTP).

You don't mention who your leased line provider is or what you're paying so its difficult to gauge value for money.

I have experience of both FTTP and DIA service for our own business and use, with a number of providers over the years. I've recently been back out in the market negotiating a new term (in London at least) so I have a fairly good idea of what the market and prices are like. Canterbury will be a bit of different beast, as there will be naturally less native networks about, but you're not that remote that prices will out of kilter with metro prices I would have thought. I know that outside of Woodbridge (Suffolk) for example my leased line costs were approx. 30% higher than in central London and higher bandwidth tiers were less prevalent.

Having Openreach tails will help in terms of getting another leased service. Most providers will use Openreach tails if they are there already.

In Suffolk I have reverted to FTTP for the main service, away from a DIA service. We had FTTP built to us as part of an FTTP on Demand request back in 2018-19. A large chunk of that infrastructure was actually utilised as part of the DIA service - it actually made it economic to deliver with otherwise enormous excess construction costs. So FTTP helped with leased line service in some ways. The reverse however wouldn't be true - i.e. having a leased circuit installed in premises won't necessarily help you get FTTP.

In reply to a post by jpm:

What do you use your internet connection for? I doubt that you require the leased line and you'd probably be served fine with your FTTP and adding a 5G/4G failover to that service for now, and FTTP from a second physical network (YouFibre, Virgin) when available.

Combination of continuous VPN access to Azure but also post production - so moving large files around. The guaranteed 100 up was always needed vs the 10 or so I was seeing with ADSL. Now of course even the backup line can do 100 but there is a possibility that If I get a good higher bandwidth leased line quote maybe I would stick, I can never have enough upload when it comes to deadline crunch time. There is no decent 4G/5G here, for a major city the infrastructure was/is particularly bad. I'd considered starlink at one point!

thank you!

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

FTTP and leased line aka Direct Internet Access (DIA) / Ethernet service are similar but still different beasts.

Super helpful reply, thank you.

So the LL is TalkTalk and I'm currently paying around £350/month. Stability has been good and yes, when there's an issue the responses have been quite good. I don't have any metrics on FTTP yet to understand how solid it might be. That's part of the issue. And if there is a problem with the line it is more likely to be at the other end I guess.

Upload is important to me, but then many services don't necessarily absorb a full 100mbit, some do though. But a single upload over a gig line as an example - I am not sure that would actually see a full bandwidth upload? So there's a range here. I've not seen any services here that go over 100 up and whilst that's been good for me so far, I would expect my needs to increase over the term of a LL contract for example.

I'd love to know what kind of ranges you're being quoted. There was a recent general shift here in Canterbury in terms of infrastructure and fibre. So the future looks promising.

My understanding is that YouFibre and VirginMedia are perhaps not on OR, and that interests me because as you say just popping another FTTP line could mean I am contending myself and not getting any redundancy and at least with the line I get redundancy. But that line goes to the same pole, so I do not know what happens there - there's a black OR box on the pole, like a police helmet and that was installed when the LL went in but now I assume that is also serving other fibre connections off that pole now.

thanks
Paul

Thanks for the update. That's helpful context. To give you some pointers, in London I was recently (as of last week) quoted under £300 pcm for a full 1G/1G DIA/Ethernet service direct from a major carrier (rather than a reseller) on a 36 month term, using their own fibre. No construction or install costs. using their own tails and network, rather than Openreach.

I can also give you various prices I've had back on 10G/10G services for a flavour of where things are at.

A few years ago, there used to be a substantive cost difference, if you were only partly using the full bandwidth for a bearer (i.e. using fractional bandwidth, perhaps with the ability to burst to the full capacity of the bearer) say 100 or 500 Mbps on a 1G bearer. These days the price differential, especially on a 3 year term, isn't that apparent. 1G in a lot of places tends to be what folks will put in as a minimum.

Some other tips:

1. Avoid resellers if you at all can. Prices are keen often, but when push comes to shove - you get what you pay for. My experience with them has been shall we say, suboptimal. I wont name, names in public but if you DM/PM me I will give you my experiences. I'm certainly not the only one either, I have had several people over the years tell me their tails of woe. It's often expensive and painful.

2. Be very aware that many network providers, even some massive ones, are now including a yearly annual RPI/CPI + % uplift in their terms. Not highlighted or even mentioned at time of quoting. Very cheeky as your wont see that until they send you a draft agreement to sign. Caveat Emptor

3. Do lots of shopping! There is still a huge variety in pricing on Ethernet services.

4. be prepared to negotiate. Hard. It's amazing how much some carriers / providers will move given enough incentive (like a chunky revenue stream for a couple of years!!)

In reply to a post by paulome:

So the LL is TalkTalk and I'm currently paying around £350/month. Stability has been good and yes, when there's an issue the responses have been quite good. I don't have any metrics on FTTP yet to understand how solid it might be. That's part of the issue. And if there is a problem with the line it is more likely to be at the other end I guess.

Upload is important to me, but then many services don't necessarily absorb a full 100mbit, some do though. But a single upload over a gig line as an example - I am not sure that would actually see a full bandwidth upload? So there's a range here. I've not seen any services here that go over 100 up and whilst that's been good for me so far, I would expect my needs to increase over the term of a LL contract for example.

If upload is important to you, then a 1G/1G leased line will give you that full capacity (subject to the target being able to absorb it as you say). You pay more more than FTTP for the privilege, although typically 1G/1G is not much more than 100M/100M.

Given that the leased line is already installed, you should be able to get a decent price for a 12-month renewal, or a 12-month term on a 1G/1G upgrade, rather than having to take out another 3 year contract.

Beware that many leased line contracts have an auto-renewal clause, which says that if you don't issue notice of termination at least 90 days before the end of the period, they will automatically renew for a full 12 month term.

As for FTTP: an Openreach FTTP service is shared by up to 30 users, with 2.4G down and 1.2G up. Since most people don't upload much, the chances are your 100M upload is not going to be congested very often.

In theory, Openreach also sell 1000/220 on FTTP, but it is priced so high at wholesale it's almost as expensive as a leased line, and I know only one provider who sells it (Cerberus). Even BT themselves don't sell it.

However, Openreach have also announced a symmetric 1G/1G FTTP service to be introduced next April. It will be only in trial areas initially. I suspect they will have to price it more reasonably, if they are hoping to compete with altnets.

Depending on where you get your FTTP from, you may be able to pay for "enhanced care" rather than "standard care", which gives you a faster response time to faults. The Aquiss FTTP pages explain this (they use standard care for residential lines, and enhanced care for business lines)

With post production, you can easily create 50gb to 100gb+ file sizes depending on the client and the end quality needed - if you need to to do a revision you will want to chuck it out in minutes not 30 minutes, so bandwidth helps. Paul will need as much upload as his budget allows him. Untill OR release xgs-pon i think the fttp market for higher speeds will be what it is now. So maybe a 12 month contract would work in his favour.

I wouldn't be too optimistic that having an EAD in already can give you 12-month term options on a 1Gb service that are appealing - EAD LA is a £2058 installation charge regardless of whether there's a physical fibre in place already. Once you add the circuit rental you're at £318/month costs from Openreach before you've supplied a CPE, put an internet service on top of it, or made any profit.

If there's a way to do a takeover of an existing EAD and avoid these connection charges then I'm not aware of it.

Edited by jpm (Wed 04-Dec-24 17:14:27)