Leased line vs. LLU vs. FTTC - what would you do?

[AngryTechnician]

This year both the school and I are desperate to finally leave behind our ADSL connection that (slowly) serves the entire school site. Our key requirement is to improve the upload to around 10Mbps or more to allow us to offer remote access to various on-premises systems.

 

We can barely afford what I've been quoted for a leased line install (£3,500 installation and equipment + £7,500pa) so I've been looking at alternatives. These include Easynet's LLU EtherStream service, and most recently, the FTTC broadband that is rolling out to our exchange on 31st August 2010.

 

In my view, leased line is the superior technology, and unsurprisingly the most expensive. EtherStream seems like a close second in terms of technology, and is a little bit cheaper. FTTC is considerably cheaper, but will only offer us "up to 10Mbps" upload. We would also not be able to get hold of FTTC until well into the Autumn term, whereas we could get our hands on a leased line or EtherStream much more quickly.

 

What would you do?

Edited July 7, 2010 by AngryTechnician
Note to self: learn to type properly

[srochford]

It may not help you decide but my (bitter!) experience is that just because a supplier says "we can install a leased line in 30 days" doesn't meant that they really can do that (or get anywhere near that time scale)

 

Of course, FTTC may also not be available by autumn.

 

Have you got more than one company that could possibly provide the leased line service? (Just because it's a BT line doesn't mean you have to get it from BT - Thus frequently undercut BT for a service delivered through the same fibre!)

[torledo]

This year both the school and I are desperate to finally leave behind our ADSL connection that (slowly) serves the entire school site. Our key requirement is to improve the upload to around 10Mbps or more to allow us to offer remote access to various on-premises systems.

 

We can barely afford what I've been quoted for a leased line install (£3,500 installation and equipment + £7,500pa) so I've been looking at alternatives. These include Easynet's LLU EtherStream service, and most recently, the FTTC broadband that is rolling out to our exchange on 31st August 2010.

 

In my view, leased line is the superior technology, and unsurprisingly the most expensive. EtherStream seems like a close second in terms of technology, and is a little bit cheaper. FTTC is considerably cheaper, but will only offer us "up to 10Mbps" upload. We would also not be able to get hold of FTTC until well into the Autumn term, whereas we could get our hands on a leased line or EtherStream much more quickly.

 

What would you do?

 

is leased line really superior to an ethernet service. Both come with SLA's, and uncontended bandwidth right ? I thought that the premium cost of a leased line was more to do with other factors than it purely being a better service ?

[Soulfish]

Personally I'd be looking at holding off until you see what services are being offered (and what the quality is like) of the FTTC offerings. At the same time I'd be exploring a few different options with leased lines. I know Virgin for instance are typically much much cheaper than BT for the same leased lines.

 

Have you considered bonding several FTTC connections? That may give you much higher throughput at much lower cost? If it's supported as an option of course!

[MatthewL]

I would approach Virgin and see what they can offer, they are considerably cheaper than BT and I cannot fault they, we are currently doing a huge piece of work with regards to our network and they have been used for our MPLS solution.

[AngryTechnician]

Thanks for the feedback so far. Of the quotes I've had so far, this was how they racked up cost wise (most expensive first):

 

BT (fibre)

Virgin Business (fibre) - only marginally cheaper than the BT quote, I might add

Zen (fibre)

Easynet Connect (copper)

 

FTTC on Zen is being mooted as much cheaper than these, but no formal pricing yet as the service hasn't launched yet.

[tom_newton]

I think FTTC is less likely to be as variable in "up to" as ADSL was as there's going to be less variation in copper-distance between you and the vdsl dslam. We hope to be "on that" here in the autumn.

 

What's ADSL getting you right now?

[featured_spectre]

I am on a BT Fibre which is piggy backed by E2BN. We are looking at tendering our broadband also

[AngryTechnician]

What's ADSL getting you right now?

 

Right now we get 7616/864, though that may not be representative of the actual line quality as we are on a 21CN circuit but without a 21CN product (issues with our modem so I hadn't switched us over).

[tom_newton]

Is that DSL Max? or 2+? If that's Max, that's an excellent line. Would consider FTTC myself.

[AngryTechnician]

Basically we have a contract for a Max service, but the line has been swapped onto a 2+ circuit, so I suspect we're softcapped by the line profile rather than the actual capabilities of the copper. Before the change it was still pretty good, never worse than 6500 downstream. We are only about 2km from the exchange.

[zag]

We have an easynet fiber line for similar costs, its rock solid 10/10mbit

 

We are getting it upgraded to 100mbit in a couple of months, I really would go for the 100mbit option as its not that much more expensive. I think £1,000 a year extra.

[NewOrder]

Has anybody got a contact for Virgin. I've been trying to get a sales rep to call?

[drewp]

We would also not be able to get hold of FTTC until well into the Autumn term, whereas we could get our hands on a leased line or EtherStream much more quickly.

 

We find ourselves in the same position at the moment. Our ADSL is giving us about 12MB/s down and 1.7 MB/s up but we are looking at using more cloud services e.g. Live@EDU.

 

What connection did you get in the end?

[AngryTechnician]

We did go for FTTC in the end, working fantastically for us. £77/month (£65 + £12 for a slightly better SLA) for this:

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/989907711.png

 

That's about as close as you can get to the maximum performance for FTTC, since we are less than 500m from the cabinet so have only a very short length of copper to traverse.

[irsprint84]

We're getting 100MB from global AXS

[zag]

We're also looking to get rid of our leased line and go VDSL.

 

Think it would cut the costs by £19,000 and be faster!! haha

[AngryTechnician]

For those not familiar with the term, VDSL is the service that is provided on the BT FTTC deployment, so that's what we have.

[zag]

We're getting 100MB from global AXS

 

How do you find the service? They just provided a competitive quote for me with an ADSL backup line included.

 

What about install time?

[johnc]

We've just got a new 100MB leased line delivered on a 1Gbp circuit. Prices are really starting to come down for these higher throughput lines although they are still way more expensive than the FTTC or broadband equivalents. Ours is from StratoGen - they were the cheapest for our London site but don't look so good for Manchester - guess they are london based. Details here london leased line

[nicholab]

Andrew's and Arnold are a very good specialist ISP using back hall form BT and Be they can also support line bonding. They do IPv6 as well. Edited February 4, 2011 by nicholab

[localzuk]

Speak to Opal before you think fibre is overly expensive (Talk Talk Business). The quote I got for a 100Mbit leased line from BT was £24.5k pa here (including routing gear), but with Opal it was £14.4k, plus whatever routing gear you need.

[irsprint84]

How do you find the service? They just provided a competitive quote for me with an ADSL backup line included.

 

What about install time?

 

30 dyas but we live very close to them plus not sure about service yet but they are backbone for 4 isps to my knowledge

 

Also we've got a quote under the 10k bracket but wont say more!

[dave.81]

We are currently in the process of moving to a leased line, very very rural location making things like FTTC a pipe dream! Just to give people a laugh Eclipse quoted 100mb @ £47,000 per year, BT are cheaper. Cheapest so far has been SWGfL which is a surprise as being an independant didn't think we'd get anything from them.

[zag]

The average quotes I've been getting for 100mbit are 14-15k which is a large improvement over the 20k+ that I was quoted last year.

 

Seems the prices are going down which is great to see.

 

I just ordered a "backup" vdsl line as well from Zen for 65 quid a month.