I think we are in a fairly similar situation....

We are a small business with 20 staff, we have recently installed FTTP but we are keeping our VDSL line for backup. They are with different ISPs and go to different exchanges, so short of a bus knocking down our telephone pole we are reasonably safe.

We have been using VOIP internally for years but have always had ISDN lines for external connectivity.

So now we have two reliable internet links we are planning to use the FTTP for our main internet link and route the VOIP traffic over the VDSL line. We can get far more VOIP calls down the VDSL line than we ever need.

The router will be set up to fail over in the case that either line fails.

We built our own Linux PABX and have a POE Ethernet switch to run the VOIP phones. Reliability of internal VOIP has been very good for many years and there is no rental cost.

There is a substantial saving from cancelling the 2 ISDN2e lines and renting a SIP trunk. We are going to use Zen for the SIP trunk, the VDSL line is with them and we have been with them for ~15 years, which says something about their reliability.

In conclusion I think you might find a leased line an expensive luxury.

Hope that is useful.

In reply to a post by MarkLeman:

... so short of a bus knocking down our telephone pole we are reasonably safe.

It happens, or in our case, a car. Then the Local Authority would not allow BT to reinstate the pole without giving 3 months notice - they found a work around hoiwever we were without service for several weeks!

Back in my old office several years ago we used two bonded bad ADSL lines (1.5Mb/s and 2Mb/s I think). That supported five software engineers working as part of a trans-Atlantic software development team just fine. Most of our workload was local but we shared our source code via a corporate repository and often used Remote Desktop to control test machines. We were also connected to their world-wide telephone system over VoIP.

The only time it caused us problems was if it actually failed (which was fairly rare). The bandwidth and latency was fine.

The only things we struggled with were downloading very large files (we worked with MS SQL and Outlook so occasionally had to download very large databases) or trying to connect to SQL servers located in the US.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 02-Jul-19 16:47:46)

In reply to a post by kitcat:

For leased line comparisons you could always ask for a FTTPoD quote to see what that would cost.

Leased lines are dealt with/installed differently to FTTPoD and getting a quote for FTTP will not bear any relation to what a leased line would cost.

It happens, or in our case, a car. Then the Local Authority would not allow BT to reinstate the pole without giving 3 months notice

If our pole was knocked down then we would loose our ISDN lines, VDSL and FTTP, which would be interesting to say the least! An external 4G antenna & modem is on my list to buy at some point, however there are several other disaster recovery priorities ahead of it

We are a small business with 20 staff, we have recently installed FTTP but we are keeping our VDSL line for backup. They are with different ISPs and go to different exchanges, so short of a bus knocking down our telephone pole we are reasonably safe

What makes you think the VDSL2 comes from a different NGA exchange than the FTTP?

What makes you think the VDSL2 comes from a different NGA exchange than the FTTP?

The fibre goes directly to Tunbridge Wells exchange (confirmed by the installation team who had jointed it at 8 points on route) and the copper (voice) goes to Benchley exchange. So they share a duct up the hill then go their separate ways.

Now I could not tell you exactly where the back haul from the VDSL street cabinet goes but I had always assumed it went back to the local exchange (I stand to be corrected). And it is perfectly possible (even likely) that Benchley exchange is fed from Tunbridge Wells. I am sure there will be some common infrastructure involved along the way, but the key thing for us as a small business to that we have a reasonable degree of redundancy without going over board. Mostly separate routes, separate ISPs and different technologies give enough redundancy for the moment.

For us a leased line would expose us to a very similar degree of risk from physical damage that the VDSL or FTTP lines do. Yes they have SLA, but that comes at an increased cost.

A 4G modem and external antenna will be the next level to add... just in case.

We also have to balance the other risks to our business, so for instance power cuts are far more common than phone outages, so in the overall scheme of things investing in UPSs will give me a better return on investment.

Horses for courses

By chance, it's not BT Local Business that are telling you you need a new phone system and naturally a leased line is it?

BT local business routinely try to flog us their latest weeze. Recently having failed to convince me to change ISP to BT and use their VOIP, they tried to convince me that a leased line would be free to install, when I asked why they said it was because we were very close to 'HEYWOOD exchange'. When I informed them that "HEYWOOD exchange (OL10 1LT, Church St, Heywood) is 322.90Km away from our office as the crow fly's" they refused to believe me This particular email exchange descended in to farce. A short while later we received a follow up call from an independent company doing quality checking on the service, I sent over the complete email chain, they could not believe how poor the sales person had behaved and they were incredibly apologetic.

This was just the latest example of them attempting to miss sell to us, to the point where we refused to talk to them ever again.

Most smaller exchanges only do copper based services.

Any VDSL2 cabinets on these exchanges have the fibre come from larger fibre exchanges (called NGA or Head-end exchanges).
The fibre doesn't go to the smaller copper exchange first but comes directly from the NGA exchange.

The fibre from the VDSL2 cabinet almost always comes from the same exchange as any FTTP in that area.

I was simply confused by the comment that the VDSL2 and FTTP came from different exchanges, as that's pretty rare (though it can happen).

The VDSL2 (and so your internet) would continue to work even if the copper exchange suddenly blew up.

Both your VDSL2 and FTTP would stop working if the NGA exchange blew up.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Most smaller exchanges only do copper based services.

Any VDSL2 cabinets on these exchanges have the fibre come from larger fibre exchanges (called NGA or Head-end exchanges).
The fibre doesn't go to the smaller copper exchange first but comes directly from the NGA exchange.

The fibre from the VDSL2 cabinet almost always comes from the same exchange as any FTTP in that area.

I was simply confused by the comment that the VDSL2 and FTTP came from different exchanges, as that's pretty rare (though it can happen).

The VDSL2 (and so your internet) would continue to work even if the copper exchange suddenly blew up.

Both your VDSL2 and FTTP would stop working if the NGA exchange blew up.

I can�t think of a reason why FTTP (as we know it today) would come from the small exchange in this example. It would come from the handover exchange as the infrastructure just isn�t there to terminate it at the small exchange, by design.

Of course, a leased line fibre would go to the local exchange, different tech and different network architecture. But even that would be simply connecting onto a link fibre cable between the small exchange and big exchange.