Business Fibre Broadband: Full Fibre Done Properly
Full-fibre connectivity for UK businesses, matched to how you actually work: FTTP business broadband from £29/month, SoGEA where fibre hasn't reached you yet, and dedicated leased lines from £69/month when an SLA matters more than a price tag. One postcode check covers all three.
Business fibre means full-fibre connectivity sold with business-grade service - and it covers three genuinely different products: full-fibre (FTTP) business broadband from £29/month on a shared network, SoGEA as the no-phone-line transition where fibre hasn't reached you, and dedicated leased lines from £69/month (100Mbps) with symmetric speeds and an uptime SLA. Which one you should buy depends on your postcode's networks, your user count and what an hour of downtime costs you.
What is business fibre?
Strictly, fibre broadband where the fibre runs all the way to your premises (FTTP), sold on business terms: priority support, static IP options, and contract terms built for organisations rather than households. In practice, UK providers use “business fibre” loosely enough that the same phrase covers a £29-a-month shared broadband product and a £1,999-a-month dedicated 100Gbps circuit. The differences that matter are three: contention (shared broadband slows when the street is busy; a dedicated circuit never does), symmetry (broadband uploads are a fraction of downloads; leased lines are equal both ways), and the SLA (broadband is fixed on a best-efforts basis; a leased line carries defined fix times with service credits).
What is FTTC (fibre to the cabinet)?
FTTC is what most UK businesses actually have when they say they have fibre. Fibre runs from the exchange to the green street cabinet, then copper telephone wire carries the connection the final stretch into your building. That copper final mile is the bottleneck.
Speed degrades with distance from the cabinet. A business next door to one may get close to the advertised 80Mbps down and 20Mbps up; a business 500 metres away may see 40Mbps or less. FTTC still works for small teams with modest needs, but it is a transitional technology now the copper network is being retired.
- Final mile: copper, and it is the limiting factor
- Typical speed: up to 80Mbps down and 20Mbps up, falling with distance
- Contention: shared bandwidth on a best-efforts service
If your team lives in Microsoft 365, Teams calls and cloud apps, FTTC’s weak upload and variability will show. That is usually the trigger to look at FTTP or a business leased line.
What is FTTP (fibre to the premises)?
FTTP removes the copper entirely - fibre runs from the exchange directly into your building. Speed no longer depends on how far you sit from a cabinet, maximum speeds are higher, and latency is lower. Where FTTP is available it should be the default over FTTC for any business that depends on reliable performance.
Speeds run from 100Mbps to 1Gbps depending on which network passes your building. FTTP is delivered over Openreach’s expanding build and over CityFibre in the towns and cities where CityFibre has laid its own infrastructure, with new build-outs published regularly by Openreach.
- Final mile: fibre all the way, no copper
- Typical speed: 100Mbps to 1Gbps download
- Upload: far better than FTTC, still well short of a leased line
- From: £29/month on business terms
FTTP is still broadband, not a dedicated circuit - the bandwidth is contended, shared with others on the network. For most small teams that is fine. When it stops being fine, the answer is a leased line.
How FTTC, FTTP and leased lines compare
The three sit on a ladder. The honest way to choose is by what breaks first for you: distance from the cabinet, upload capacity, or the absence of any guarantee when something fails.
| FTTC | FTTP | Leased line | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Final mile | Copper | Fibre | Dedicated fibre |
| Speed | Up to 80Mbps, distance-dependent | 100Mbps to 1Gbps | 100Mbps to 100Gbps |
| Upload | Up to 20Mbps | A fraction of download | Equal to download |
| Shared with others | Yes | Yes | No |
| SLA | Best efforts | Best efforts | Contractual fix times |
| From | - | £29/month | £69/month |
A leased line is symmetrical and uncontended, and it carries a formal SLA - a fault becomes a breach with a clock on it rather than a best-efforts ticket. That contractual guarantee, not the headline speed, is usually what businesses are actually buying.
Which business fibre do you actually need?
The honest heuristic we use daily: a team of a dozen people doing email, SaaS and video calls is well served by full-fibre business broadband from £29/month - the money saved against a leased line pays for a lot of other IT. The calculation flips when downtime has a per-hour cost you can name, when uploads are constant (off-site backup, media, CAD, large file movement), or when the phones run over the connection and call quality is non-negotiable: that's leased line territory, from £69/month for 100Mbps, and the leased line vs broadband comparison walks the decision properly. And if full fibre hasn't reached your postcode yet, SoGEA bridges you off the retiring copper network until it does.
Full fibre availability: the real constraint
What you can buy is decided by which networks pass your building. Openreach's full-fibre build is the biggest, CityFibre serves large parts of many UK cities, and Virgin's network adds another route - and they don't overlap neatly, which is why two neighbouring postcodes can get completely different quotes. We check all of them in one pass, plus route-dependent carriers like Zayo and Colt for dedicated circuits, and tell you what's genuinely orderable at your address - including when the right answer is “wait three months for the FTTP build instead of signing a long SoGEA contract now”.
Business fibre pricing, plainly
Entry full-fibre business broadband starts at £29/month. Dedicated fibre starts at £69/month for 100Mbps and £129/month for 1Gbps, with installation typically £500–£2,000 depending on address - full tier-by-tier floors are on the leased line pricing page. Every AMVIA price is a published from-price on a spec-dependent range: the exact figure is quoted per postcode, because that is honestly how the economics of fibre work.
Why fibre, and why now
The three products sold as "business fibre"
Providers use the same two words for very different things. Here's the honest taxonomy.
Full-fibre business broadband (FTTP)
Fibre to your premises on a shared network - fast (115Mbps–1Gbps+), affordable (from £29/month), business-grade support and static IP, but contended and without a fix-time SLA. Right for most small offices.
SoGEA (where fibre hasn't arrived)
Broadband without a phone line over the existing copper-fibre hybrid - the transition product that gets you off the analogue network before 2027 while the FTTP build reaches you.
Dedicated leased lines
Your own uncontended, symmetric fibre circuit with an SLA - from £69/month for 100Mbps, £129 for 1Gbps. Right when downtime costs real money or uploads matter as much as downloads.
From postcode to live fibre
One check, every network, an honest recommendation.
Postcode check
We check Openreach, CityFibre and Virgin availability at your address - plus route-dependent carriers where relevant - and tell you what's actually orderable.
Right-size the product
Broadband, SoGEA or leased line, based on your users, uptime tolerance and upload needs - not on what carries the biggest commission.
Managed install
We handle the order, the engineer visit and the router config. Leased lines include the survey; broadband installs typically complete in days to weeks depending on network.
Support that answers
UK-based Sheffield support for the life of the service - and one provider across fibre, VoIP and IT if you want the whole stack under one SLA.
Why AMVIA for business fibre
Carrier-independent, security-first, and honest about which product you actually need.
Every network, one quote
We're not tied to one access network, so the recommendation follows your postcode's reality - Openreach, CityFibre, Virgin or a route-dependent carrier.
Security-first engineering
The provider configuring your router also runs managed firewalls and holds Cyber Essentials Plus - the network edge is set up like we'll be audited on it.
Sheffield-based support
UK engineers who answer the phone, with published SLAs on dedicated circuits.
Built for the upgrade path
Broadband today, leased line when you outgrow it - we plan bearer and contract choices so the step up doesn't mean starting over.
Client testimonial coming soon. AMVIA protects over 1,200 UK businesses.
AMVIA Client
Not sure which fibre you need?
Tell us your postcode and how many people you've got - we'll tell you honestly whether £29 broadband is enough or a leased line earns its keep.
Business fibre questions
Often the same physical network, different service wrap: business products add priority UK support, static IP availability, business contract terms and (on dedicated circuits) an SLA with defined fix times. What business fibre doesn't automatically mean is a dedicated line - a £29/month business FTTP service is still a shared network, just with business-grade service around it.
Full-fibre business broadband from £29/month; dedicated leased lines from £69/month (100Mbps), £129/month (1Gbps) and £349/month (10Gbps) on 36-month terms in well-served areas, plus typical installation of £500–£2,000 on dedicated circuits. All figures are published from-price floors - exact pricing is per postcode.
Where FTTP is available, almost always: it's faster, more consistent, unaffected by line length, and it's the network the UK is migrating to as copper retires. FTTC and SoGEA remain sensible only where the fibre build hasn't reached you - and SoGEA specifically exists to get you off the analogue phone network before January 2027 while you wait.
When downtime has a nameable hourly cost, when uploads matter as much as downloads (backup, media, CAD), when the phone system runs over the connection, or when compliance demands an SLA. Below those thresholds, business fibre broadband plus a 4G backup is usually the better spend - and we'll say so.
It depends which networks pass your building - Openreach, CityFibre and Virgin coverage differ street by street. We check all of them (plus route-dependent carriers for dedicated circuits) in one postcode check and come back within 24 hours with what's orderable and at what price.
Yes - order, engineer visit, router configuration and ongoing UK-based support are all handled by our Sheffield team. Dedicated circuits include the site survey and carry our published SLA; and if you want connectivity, VoIP and managed IT under one provider, that's the model most of our customers end up on.
FTTP is genuinely all-fibre from exchange to premises. FTTC is also often marketed as “fibre optic broadband” but has a copper final mile that caps speed and varies with distance. When you evaluate a product, check specifically whether it is FTTP (fibre all the way) or FTTC (fibre to the cabinet, copper from cabinet to building) - the label “fibre” alone does not tell you.
Business FTTP runs in tiers from 100Mbps up to 1Gbps download, depending on the infrastructure at your postcode. Upload is typically 50–100Mbps on higher business tiers - much faster than FTTC’s 20Mbps ceiling, but lower than a leased line’s symmetrical rate. If you push large files, run cloud backups or host services, upload is usually the figure that matters most.
Openreach plans to stop new FTTC installations in areas where FTTP is available, and many existing FTTC products will migrate to FTTP as the full-fibre rollout completes. Businesses on FTTC in FTTP-covered areas should plan their migration now; most providers offer like-for-like migrations with no installation disruption. Openreach publishes its build and stop-sell programme, so you can check your area in advance.
Rural FTTP availability is improving but remains patchy. Openreach’s rural rollout, partly funded by the government’s Project Gigabit programme, is extending coverage well beyond towns and cities. Availability has expanded considerably over the past 18 months, so check your postcode - full fibre may now reach addresses where it previously did not.
Business broadband (FTTC or FTTP) typically includes a static IP as standard or as a low-cost add-on, and a leased line includes one as standard. Consumer broadband usually does not. A static IP matters for VPNs, hosted services, remote access and security systems that need a fixed, known address - so confirm it is included before you sign.
Free email security scan
Most breaches start with an email. Run a free scan and see in seconds how exposed your domain is to spoofing and phishing - real DNS checks, plain-English results.
Fibre, phones and IT - one provider
Most AMVIA fibre customers add hosted VoIP or managed IT within the first year, because one SLA beats three suppliers pointing at each other. Start with the circuit.
Fibre guides and tools
Leased line pricing by tier
100Mb from £69, 1Gb from £129, 10Gb from £349 - the floors and what moves them.
Leased line vs broadband
The honest decision framework between the £29 and £69 options.
SoGEA explained
The no-phone-line transition product for postcodes still waiting on full fibre.
Openreach fibre checker
Check FTTP availability at your postcode in seconds.
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