Should your business get a leased line, a VPN, or both? The answer depends on your bandwidth requirements, security requirements and your budget.

Leased line availability depends on three key factors: i) location ii) the bandwidth required iii) your budget.

If money is no object, you can get a leased line almost anywhere in the UK, as long as your landlord doesn't stand in the way of the line being installed. BT and others will literally dig up miles of road and pavement, if you're willing to pay the cost of them doing so.

Leased lines are dedicated symmetric data connections that link two locations.

Connection Speeds

Leased lines come in a range of sizes, from 2Mbit/s up to 10Gbit/s plus. The higher the speed, the more they cost.

The higher speeds are all delivered over a fibre-optic network. The lower speeds may be delivered over fibre, or over a mix of fibre and copper (DSL).

Dedicated

When it comes to leased lines UK companies are very well served. Speeds of anything from 2Mbps to 10Gbps are available throughout much of the country… at a price.

There are two main networks. BT's and Virgin Media's.