FTTP and leased lines both use fibre optic cable to reach the building. They are not the same product. One shares capacity with other customers; the other reserves it for you, with a written repair commitment behind it.
FTTP explained
Fibre to the Premises finishes the run in fibre, all the way into the building, instead of dropping to copper for the last stretch. Download rates of 1Gbps are common, and a number of products exceed that. Treat the headline speed as a starting point:
- Contended. Other customers on the same exchange draw from the same pool of capacity. When that pool is busy, your speed falls.
- Asymmetric. The path back out is much slower than the path in. A 900Mbps download product can sit around 100Mbps on the upload side.
- Best-effort SLA. Faults are treated as promptly as the provider can manage, without a strong written guarantee. Repair is usually aimed at the next working day.
- Cost: £30 to £80 per month for a business FTTP circuit.
Leased line explained
With a leased line, the fibre path from your site into the carrier network is reserved for your traffic:
- Uncontended. The capacity is held for your organisation. Other customers cannot take a share of it.
- Symmetric. Upload and download run at the same speed.
- SLA-backed. Contracts typically guarantee 99.9% uptime or higher, with repair targets of 4 to 6 hours and financial credits if those targets are missed.
- Static IPs. Included with the service.
- Cost: £200 to £800 per month, set by the speed you take and where the site sits.
Side-by-side comparison
| | FTTP | Leased Line | |---|---|---| | Speed | Up to 1Gbps+ download | 100Mbps to 10Gbps, matching both ways | | Upload speed | 10 to 20% of the download rate | The same as download | | Contention | Shared with other customers | Dedicated to your site | | SLA repair time | Next working day | 4 to 6 hours | | Uptime guarantee | None, or best effort | 99.9%+ written into the contract | | Static IP | Sometimes an extra | Included | | Monthly cost | £30 to £80 | £200 to £800 |
When FTTP is enough
It's the right product for a team of fewer than 15 people using email, the web and Microsoft 365 lightly. FTTP doesn't leave them short of bandwidth, and a leased line is hard to defend on price.
FTTP also has a role as a backup circuit. Run it next to a leased line and you have a cheaper path ready if the primary link fails.
When you need a leased line
Heavy upload work. Large file transfers, cloud backups and applications that send a lot of data upstream will hit FTTP's weaker upload path first.
Voice and video. Calls and video meetings need a stable, low-latency path. On shared FTTP, jitter and packet loss tend to appear when the exchange is busy.
When an outage stops work. If the business cannot operate without the connection, the written uptime cover and faster repair are what the extra monthly spend buys.
More than 20 people online at once. Shared FTTP starts to run short of consistent capacity at this scale. Video calls make that shortage obvious.
The hybrid approach
A common pattern is to run both. A leased line takes the working-day traffic under an SLA, and FTTP sits behind it as failover, switched by SD-WAN. When the main circuit drops, traffic moves to the FTTP path without a manual changeover.
A 200Mbps leased line with a 500Mbps FTTP backup typically costs £350 to £500 a month. That's a real increase in resilience for a measured extra outlay.
Why automation needs a reliable circuit
AI and automation use the same connection as everything else. Workflow tools, document processing and agents that reach cloud systems all slow down or stop when the link is congested. If you're putting repetitive work onto automated systems, the circuit underneath them has to hold up.
How Wanzo helps
We quote across more than 30 UK carriers so the circuit matches the address and the way the connection will be used. The answer can be FTTP, a leased line, or a leased line with FTTP failover under SD-WAN. We take on procurement and the install, then manage the circuit once it's live.
What to do next
Send the site address, the headcount and a short note on how the connection is used. We'll put a recommendation and a quote together. Start on the contact page.