Leased lines and timescales

[batmanreturns]

In answer to the question it's becuase we are based on voipfones, have around 30 people in the office and are due to grow to approx 50 people next year hence needing a leased line.
thanks for everyone thats replied. Looks like i'm in the hands of good old Openreach and their 3 month window!

[dmsims]

batmanreturns said:

In answer to the question it's becuase we are based on voipfones, have around 30 people in the office and are due to grow to approx 50 people next year hence needing a leased line.
thanks for everyone thats replied. Looks like i'm in the hands of good old Openreach and their 3 month window!

Interesting how does the ££'s work out for that and what do you do if you lose the leased line ?

[S10GTA]

Interestingly I've just received an email asking if I'd be happy for it to be passed over before the previously agreed date. Looks like we'll be done in about 6 weeks.

[cashmax]

dmsims said:

batmanreturns said:

In answer to the question it's becuase we are based on voipfones, have around 30 people in the office and are due to grow to approx 50 people next year hence needing a leased line.
thanks for everyone thats replied. Looks like i'm in the hands of good old Openreach and their 3 month window!

Interesting how does the ££'s work out for that and what do you do if you lose the leased line ?

100Mbit Leased circuit 450-800 Per month. A decent provider will include FTTC/ADSL backup terminated on the same router. Most people don't need the bandwidth, but its not much cheaper for less than 100Mbps. You are paying the money in the hope that someone gives a st if it goes down, rather than a none dedicated service like ADSL or FTTC that could be down for hours before getting fixed. Poor latency and lack of bandwidth availability are almost impossible to resolve with these services too, which don't mix very well with VOIP.

[dmsims]

James thanks for the insight

I was wondering what the cost of leased line would be vs "conventional" telephony given that you could forego the leased line with the latter

There is also the more complex management of VOIP e.g. QOS

Leased lines can go down for days!

[OriginBB]

Morning All,

I just want to cover a couple of points on this thread that may help users when browsing

• The standard time quoted by any provider will always be around 3 months but you wont know for sure until a survey has been done, they can sometimes be done quicker than this or longer it just depends if any additional work is required. (Way leave agreements, New ducting’s needed or blocked ducts to be cleared, then they have to have permission from councils to dig etc) – However any provide should update you after the survey with a project delivery schedule which details the work that has to be carried out & provide you with a estimated completion date.

• Virgin operate there own network for “on net” leased lines however they do also use third parties if it is outside there network (They use Vodafone, BT, Talk Talk etc) anything that is not on Virgins network will always be delivered through the open reach infrastructure.

• Open reach only provide the civils / installation work your actual provider will only ever be a internet service provider who is in your exchange (you can see your exchange & which providers are in your exchange using sam knows - https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search... if the company your are dealing with don’t show in the exchange then they will be delivering the service via a third party tail.

• Always have a good shop about at all the providers when it comes to a leased line connection, don’t just buy on price (Although this is a major factor), make sure you look at the service level agreement & what are there technical support hours? A 4 hour SLA is pretty standard on a leased line product, Most providers should offer QoS as standard if you need this so make sure you get your moneys worth!

• Leased line generally don’t go down unless there is network maintenance or a issue within the exchange but leased line circuits are usually prioritised over any other connection, also worth checking the service level credit on the contract

Thanks

[cashmax]

dmsims said:

James thanks for the insight

I was wondering what the cost of leased line would be vs "conventional" telephony given that you could forego the leased line with the latter

There is also the more complex management of VOIP e.g. QOS

Leased lines can go down for days!

They can go down for days, but thankfully it's pretty rare. Most of the big call centres will have a backup circuit and even good old ISDN backup too. The flexibility of VOIP makes it a must have nowadays in that game.

Regarding management, there is rarely a requirement for QOS on the wide area link itself, because most people overspec the bandwidth and it is all available 100% of the time, but most often, it might be required within the local network environment.

Even without VOIP, most businesses have a significant dependency on the Internet nowdays and that's only going to grow. A leased line is really the only form of comms thats suitable for running a decent sized business with this dependency, simply because they will have a reasonable service level agreement and always be the first to fix in the event of an outage, FTTC & XDSL are capable solutions when they are working ok, but the bandwidth and availability are not guaranteed and this makes them unsuitable business solutions.

[dmsims]

I can appreciate there is little choice for a big call centre

Most (all?) small-medium business will not have the expertise for VOIP in house and I wondered how the OP's costs stacked up

[jamoor]

bga said:

It took me 6 months to get a leased line in. That was mainly due to Openreach and our line provider being bloody useless when faced with a collapsed conduit in the road.

took us 12 months with similar hiccups, involving road closures etc.

[poing]

jamoor said:

bga said:

It took me 6 months to get a leased line in. That was mainly due to Openreach and our line provider being bloody useless when faced with a collapsed conduit in the road.

took us 12 months with similar hiccups, involving road closures etc.

Same for our sales office, partly because of not knowing who owned a private road Openreach needed to use. The survey said it was straight forward and would be about 6 weeks. Hopefully the person who did the survey got fired, twice. The amount of moaning from the dozen staff there was horrendous and no amount of telling them there was nothing anyone can do helped.

[eliot]

Without naming names, but it took one well known provider over a year to put a line into the head office of the parent company who is also very well known and may or may not off just recently fell of his bike.

It all came down to wayleaves and digging cobbles up - but it shows that it doesn't matter who you are, these things just take time sometimes.

Last line we put into our own building got bogged down over insurance excess, the landlord wanted unlimited liability to drill a 10mm hole through the wall!

[wombleh]

Some offices come with big internet pipes so VPN can fill the gap until the leased line arrives. If it's small enough then 4g or phone line broadband might do the same with much quicker lead time.

[eliot]

wombleh said:

. If it's small enough then 4g or phone line broadband might do the same with much quicker lead time.

We have run an office over four 4g connections bonded together with a box called peplink which got us out of a hole whilst we waited for lines to be run in.

[wombleh]

Sounds like a good bit of kit. Do you need another peplink box at the other end to reassemble?

[eliot]

wombleh said:

Sounds like a good bit of kit. Do you need another peplink box at the other end to reassemble?

Yes you do.