Question 1

What is the difference between a leased line and business broadband?

Accepted Answer

A **leased line** is a dedicated circuit reserved entirely for you, with guaranteed capacity in both directions and a contractual repair commitment. **Business broadband** is a shared service with a better support wrapper than a consumer product. The price difference is large, and so is what you actually get.

**The differences that matter:**

**Contention.** Broadband capacity is **shared** with other subscribers, so performance varies with what neighbours are doing — the evening slowdown. A leased line is **uncontended**: the capacity is yours whether you use it or not.

**Symmetry.** Most broadband is heavily asymmetric, with upload a fraction of download. **A leased line is symmetric**, which is what actually matters for a business hosting anything, running backups, using video conferencing at scale, or operating a VPN for remote staff.

**The service level agreement**, which is the real product. A leased line carries a guaranteed **availability percentage**, a guaranteed **time to fix** — commonly measured in hours, around the clock — and **service credits** payable when it is missed. **Business broadband typically offers a target, not a guarantee**, and consumer broadband offers neither.

**Dedicated fibre**, in most cases, rather than shared infrastructure.

**Static addressing** as standard, and blocks of addresses where needed.

**Proactive monitoring**, where the provider detects a fault before you report it.

**What it costs.** Substantially more — frequently an order of magnitude — plus potential **excess construction charges** where new fibre must be laid to the premises, which can be very large and is quoted after a survey rather than upfront.

**Installation takes months**, not days, because civil works and wayleaves may be required.

**Who genuinely needs one:** businesses where downtime has a direct cost, those hosting services or handling large uploads, sites with many concurrent users, and anywhere a specific availability commitment is contractually required.

**The middle options**, which suit most small businesses better: business fibre with a stronger service level, or **two diverse broadband connections with automatic failover**, which delivers much of the resilience for a fraction of the cost.

Question 2

What do "up to" and "average" broadband speeds actually mean?

Accepted Answer

They are defined advertising terms rather than promises, and understanding which one you were given tells you what you can actually hold a provider to. "Up to" speeds described the theoretical

Question 3

Why do so many different broadband providers use the same network?

Accepted Answer

Because in most countries the physical access network is a natural monopoly — nobody is going to dig up every street several times over — so regulation separates the company that owns the wires from

Question 4

What is an ISP actually selling you?

Accepted Answer

Access to their network, and through it a share of a shared resource — which is why "up to" appears in every advertisement and why your speed varies by time of day. What the connection is. Your line

Question 5

Why is my upload speed so much slower than my download speed?

Accepted Answer

Most residential connections are deliberately asymmetric, meaning far more capacity is allocated to downloading than uploading. This is a design decision rather than a fault. Historically households

Question 6

What is the last mile problem?

Accepted Answer

The final connection from a network's local distribution point to each individual building is disproportionately expensive, and that single fact shapes almost everything about broadband availability,

Question 7

What is the difference between a static and a dynamic IP address?

Accepted Answer

Whether your public address stays the same or changes periodically — and for most people it matters far less than it sounds, until it suddenly matters a great deal. Dynamic. Your ISP assigns an

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