Leased Line Costs - How to Reduce Them

Leased line costs have tumbled. And if you're smart, you can reduce them still further...

Get Your Leased Line From a Carrier-Independent Supplier

Your leased line service will make use of a circuit provided by a 'carrier', a firm that has a physical network near to your office. This reduces the amount of digging required to connect you up to your leased line provider, as most of the distance can be covered by networks that are already in the ground.

Some leased line providers only use one carrier. For example, some firms only resell circuits from BT.

If you want the best prices, you should get a leased line from a provider that's not beholden to any one carrier. That way, the cost of your leased line can be minimised by using the best value option that's available at each of your sites.

Get a 3, 4 or 5 Year Contract

If you sign a one year contract, you'll end up paying through the nose.

A leased line costs many thousands of pounds to install. If you sign a 3, 4 or 5 year contract, you give your ISP a chance to spread this cost over several years.

If you sign a one year deal, they have to recoup thousands in the first year, leading to higher installation charges, or substantially higher monthly fees.

My advice would be to never sign a one year leased line contract unless you know you're going to be moving shortly afterward.

Embrace 'Converged Communications' to reduce Leased Line Costs

Your probably paying for ISDN circuits to link your office phone system to the public telephone network. And you may not need to!

It's now possible to send phone calls over a leased line, using a technology called 'SIP Trunking'.

If you can do this, the money you save on ISDN rental charges and call charges can offset your leased line costs to some degree.

There are other benefits to converged communication besides cost reduction. For example SIP Trunking is far more scalable than ISDN which can only carry up to 30 concurrent calls per circuit.

Buy Internet Access in the Cloud

If your company has several different locations that are connected by leased lines, you can reduce costs by buying a central pool of Internet access 'in the cloud' and sharing it between your different sites.

Pooling the spare Internet bandwidth in the cloud lets you reduce the total amount of bandwidth you need to buy in order to cope with peak demand.

And that Internet access is cheaper too, as you're buying in bulk, rather than paying for 2Mb here and 2Mb there.