Business broadband explained: choosing the right connection for your office

The connection types you'll be offered

• FTTC (fibre to the cabinet): fibre to the street cabinet, copper for the last stretch. Typically 30–80Mbps down and limited upload.
• SoGEA: the same technology without a analogue phone line attached — the usual replacement now the PSTN is being switched off.
• FTTP (full fibre): fibre all the way to the building. 100Mbps to 1Gbps+, far more stable, and increasingly available across the UK.
• FWA / 4G–5G: useful as a backup or for temporary sites where fixed lines aren't available.
• Leased line (dedicated ethernet): uncontended, symmetrical, with a hard SLA and fix times measured in hours.

Speed matters less than you think — upload and contention matter more

Most business problems blamed on 'slow broadband' are actually upload problems. Video calls, cloud backups, VoIP phone calls and sending large files all push data upwards. A 70Mbps connection with 18Mbps upload will feel far worse on a busy Teams day than a 100/100 full fibre line.

Contention is the second factor: standard broadband shares capacity with everyone else on the exchange, so performance dips at peak times. A leased line is uncontended, which is why it costs more.

What a business package should include

• A business-grade SLA with a defined fix time, not a best-effort consumer promise
• A static IP if you host anything, use VPNs or need remote access
• A managed router configured for VoIP traffic priority
• UK-based support you can reach without going through a consumer call queue
• A backup option (4G/5G failover) if downtime stops you trading

How to size your connection

As a rough guide, allow around 2Mbps of headroom per concurrent video call, 100kbps per VoIP call, and enough upload for whatever cloud backup runs during the day. Add 30–40% headroom for growth, then choose the next tier up.

If your business genuinely cannot trade during an outage — a clinic, a warehouse dispatch operation, a contact centre — the conversation should start at a leased line or a fibre connection with 5G failover, not at the cheapest package.