Leased Line Advantages – Higher Speeds, Faster Uploads, Good Reliability and Better Support
Leased lines have many advantages compared to standard ADSL connections:
Leased Lines are Available at Higher Speeds
ADSL is advertised as being 'Up to 8Mbps'. ADSL2+ is advertised as being 'Up to 20' or Up to 24Mbps'. However these speeds are only available if you live very close to your local telephone exchange. The speeds available to you drop dramatically the further you are from the exchange.
If you can't get the speed you want from ADSL, a leased line may be able to provide it.
Leased lines also offer far higher speeds than 8Mbps. They can be bought at speeds of 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1000Mbps or even 10,000Mbps. ADSL simply can't compete with that.
No Slow-Down at Peak Times
ADSL is usually a 'contended service'. In other words, the bandwidth from your local exchange to your ISP is promised to 20+ customers. As long as few customers use their connections at once, this over-selling can go unnoticed.
Unfortunately, at peak times when many customers are surfing the web, this lack of backhaul capacity causes your Internet connection to slow down. Leased lines, in contrast, are dedicated to you. If you have a 10Mbps connection, there's dedicated bandwidth from you to your ISP. There's no need for you to fight other customers to get a share of that 10Mb of backhaul.
Faster Uploads
Many people think they have a 4Mbps connection or a 6Mbps connection. However that's just the download speed. The upstream speed is usually pathetic. On average it's just 800kbps.
If all you're doing is surfing the web, this doesn't matter. However businesses often find this limited amount of upstream bandwidth to be inadequate to meet their needs. This is particularly true if they want to use online backup, transfer files via FTP, or let staff connect to their work PCs from home using Remote-Desktop-Protocol.
Leased lines are symmetric, so they offer a much faster upload speed than most ADSL connections.
More Reliable
ADSL runs over a standard copper phone line. After leaving your office, your phone line ends up in a bundle of other phone lines that are going to the same telephone exchange. Unfortunately the transmissions in these other phone lines can induce currents in your one, causing transmission errors on your ADSL connection.
Leased lines are usually more reliable. For one thing, they often use fibre-optic cable, which doesn't suffer from this type of electrical interference. Secondly, they come with higher-grade more-expensive hardware, which tends to be more reliable.
Business-Class Support
ADSL is far cheaper than a leased line. Unfortunately, that means that ADSL providers have far less money to provide support than do leased line providers.
If you have a problem with your ADSL connection, you will need to spot it before troubleshooting will begin. Leased line providers will, in contrast, monitor your leased lines, so that they're aware of problems almost as soon as they happen.
Leased lines come with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Service Level Guarantees (SLGs). ADSL connections don't usually come with these.
Leased line problems are usually fixed quicker than ADSL ones. For example, one UK telecoms supplier offers a 5 hour fix target on particular leased lines. That's 24×7. So if you were to report a problem at 2am, they'll expect to have fixed it by 7am. ADSL connections seldom come with that. If you have a problem at 2am, you'll probably get a message telling you that their office hours are 9am to 5pm. When you call at 9am you'll be put in a queue. When you finally speak to someone at 9am they'll log a ticket. If you need an engineer visit to fix the problem, it could take days. And all the while, you'd be without connectivity.
Conclusion
Leased lines cost a lot more than ADSL connections, but for that extra money you get a dedicated, reliable connection with good support, SLAs and a faster upload speed. You're paying for quality.
