Is Fibre Broadband Right for Your Business?

The word 'fibre' covers a range of different broadband technologies, and the right one for your business depends on a set of factors that are specific to your operations. FTTC, FTTP and leased lines all use fibre in some part of their network, but they deliver very different levels of performance, reliability and cost. Understanding the differences — and how they map to your specific requirements — is the starting point for making the right decision.

The Three Main Options

FTTC: Fibre to the Cabinet

FTTC runs fibre from the exchange to a street cabinet, then copper from the cabinet to your building. It is the most widely available broadband technology in the UK, delivering typically 40–80Mbps download and 8–20Mbps upload.

Right for: Small offices of 1–15 staff with standard cloud workloads, where FTTP is not yet available

Not suitable when: Your team is larger, upload speeds are a bottleneck, or you have experienced reliability issues

FTTP: Full Fibre to the Premises

FTTP runs fibre all the way to your building, removing the copper last-mile entirely. Download speeds of 150Mbps–1Gbps are available, with substantially better upload speeds than FTTC and more consistent performance throughout the day.

Right for: Businesses of 5–60 staff with heavy cloud usage, Teams/Zoom meetings, hosted VoIP or significant file transfer needs

Not suitable when: You need guaranteed bandwidth with contractual SLA backing, or your team is large enough that shared-access contention becomes a concern

Leased Line

A leased line is a dedicated, symmetric fibre circuit connecting your premises directly to the provider's network. No sharing, guaranteed bandwidth and a strong SLA with defined response and repair times.

Right for: Businesses of 20+ staff where internet reliability has a direct commercial cost, or any organisation hosting services, running significant VoIP workloads, or operating with multiple simultaneous heavy users

Not suitable when: Your bandwidth needs are modest or you cannot justify the £69–£500+/month cost of a dedicated circuit

The Decision Framework

Step 1: How Many Staff Use the Connection Simultaneously?

• 1–10 staff: FTTC or lower-tier FTTP is typically sufficient
• 10–30 staff: FTTP (300–500Mbps) is appropriate in most cases
• 30–80 staff: FTTP 900Mbps or a leased line — depends on workload intensity
• 80+ staff: A leased line or multiple circuits is almost always the right answer

Step 2: What Are Your Upload Requirements?

FTTC offers modest upload speeds (8–20Mbps). FTTP provides better upload (30–100+Mbps) but still asymmetric. A leased line provides equal upload and download.

If your business regularly transfers large files outbound, runs hosted services, or has heavy Teams/Zoom usage with multiple rooms, upload speed is a primary consideration rather than an afterthought.

Step 3: What Is the Commercial Cost of Downtime?

For a sole trader, a few hours of outage is inconvenient. For a 40-person professional services firm where all client work happens in cloud systems, the same outage could cost thousands of pounds. The stronger your dependency on internet connectivity, the more the SLA protections of a leased line are worth.

Step 4: What Is Available at Your Address?

Availability narrows the options. FTTP is not yet universally available; leased line pricing varies significantly by location. Running an availability check across all networks for your specific address is the only way to know what your actual options are.

What AMVIA Recommends

Our general position is that any business with five or more staff should be on at least business FTTP rather than FTTC. For businesses with 15–20 or more staff using cloud-based systems heavily, a leased line quotation should always be requested alongside FTTP, because the price gap is often smaller than expected and the performance difference is substantial.

We check availability and compare pricing across all major networks for our clients as part of every connectivity review — no single technology or provider fits every business, and the right answer is always location- and requirement-specific.