Netfiend

Interesting questions here. Firstly, there are a number of alternatives do Leased lines. They provide a similar service, but maybe are not as resolute as a leased line. These can include copper leased lines (SDSL) or even fully bonded solutions incorporating more than one circuit, to obtain a large amount of bandwidth. Leased lines can be either fibre or copper. However if you are looking for more than 2Mb, then you will be looking at a fibre line. There are three main types. Either a 10Mb line, an 100Mb line or a 1Gb line. You would usually ask for this to be installed, then work out with your ISP (whether that be BT, NTL, Fluidata or ZEN) on the amount of bandwidth you are most likely to use. Eg. you may want a 100Mb line, but only want to use 10Mb of that, meaning that you only pay for the 10Mb. However, they can be quite troublesome. As well as being extremely expensive if you are out of a city, they can take up to 60days to install and are frought with excess charges. However, if they work, they work VERY well. For quick info, have a look at Fluidata Ltd | Leased Line | Legacy Internet Connectivity | Low Contention

Not sure if this is still relevant, but if you're still looking at a broadband option, the best thing to do would be to pop your postcode into the checkers at Samknows Broadband - Comprehensive Broadband Information. That will give you a rough estimate of your line length and also what options are available to you at your exchange. As a rule of thumb, ADSL's optimum distance is anything under 3Km, whereas ADSL2+ is around the 5Km mark. Let us know how you get on

Not sure if this may be relevant, but am speaking to a school in Durham who are having the same problem as you all, in terms of their leased line costs. We're in the process of helping them with a resilient bonded dsl option, that is a lot cheaper, but still provides decent throughput. If I can help you lot in anyway, feel free to PM me, and I'll get on the case.