PriceInsight™ delivers the latest BT Leased Line Pricing and Discounts

BT offers leased line plans starting at £195.00 ex VAT/month for 50Mbps (BTnet Express) to £370.00 ex VAT/month for 500Mbps (BTnet). BTnet Express and BTnet are offered with the same SLA but differ in terms of bandwidth tiers and security.

The cost difference between BTnet Express and BTnet largely depends on speed and business size requirements. BTnet Express, best for smaller businesses, starts at £195 per month (ex VAT) for 50 Mbps, offering guaranteed symmetrical speeds and a 5-hour fix SLA. For larger businesses, BTnet starts at £299 per month (ex VAT) for 200 Mbps, with speeds up to 1 Gbps and additional resilience options. A higher 500 Mbps BTnet plan is available for £370 per month (ex VAT), also offering flexible speed adjustments and increased resilience. All plans are based on 60-month terms with no connection fee. (36 and 12 month terms are available)

BT leased line costs vary depending on aspects as follows:

• Proximity to the the nearest BT PoP (Point of Presence)
• Edge hardware costs - i.e. choose from standard Cisco CPE, Meraki or Fortinet
• Resilience and diversity - whether or not a secondary circuit is required to avoid single point of failure
• Contract term across 12, 36 and 60 month contracts
• Bandwidth - choose between 1Gbps and 10Gbps circuit options

Businesses should weigh the benefits of BT leased line coverage and costs to make informed decisions suitable for their organisations.

What installation costs are associated with BT leased lines?

Installation fees for BT leased lines can vary depending on several factors. For example, fees can range from a few hundred to several thousand pounds depending on your location and the contract length business leased line you choose. BT offers free installation costs across 36 and 60-month contracts, but this does not include excess construction charges (ECCs).

The installation process involves a site survey to determine the most practical way of connecting the leased line service from the local exchange to your business. The site survey may reveal that ECCs apply, but don't worry – you'll find out about any ECCs before the installation progresses. If you decide to cancel the service at this point, you can do so without incurring additional costs.

Here's a breakdown of what you need to know about BT leased line ECCs:

• ECC Definition: ECC, or Excess Construction Charge, is a fee associated with setting up a new leased line circuit where additional work is required to connect your business premises to the BT network. This work could require a dig which may require traffic control or other council or landlord involvement.
• ECCs come into play when there's a need for new or additional infrastructure by Openreach. This could be for locations that haven't been connected before or for temporary construction sites.
• How Are ECC Costs Determined? To calculate the potential ECCs, Openreach conducts a survey to evaluate the scope of work required. This process involves a joint site survey, which is followed by a report detailing the necessary work. Openreach covers the initial £2,800 of any charges, which is factored into the final charges presented to the customer.

Options After Receiving ECC Estimates:

Upon receiving the ECC estimates, you will have the choice to proceed or not. If you opt not to continue, there are no fees or costs incurred. If no ECCs are applicable, the order moves forward without any issues.

• Ways to Potentially Reduce ECCs: Customers have the opportunity to discuss potential cost-saving measures during the survey. This might involve undertaking some of the civil works independently or using independent contractors.

BTnet Layer 3 Firewall

BTnet Layer 3 Firewall services are configured to protect your traffic with website and application blocking. The initial configuration is provided as a template which ensures standard unwanted application and website access is denied.

BTnet UTM Threat Management

BTnet UTM offers complete threat management from Meraki. BT UTM protects from intrusions, malware, viruses, and URL filtering. The initial configuration is provided out of the box to get you started.

Leased Line Options

Customers are able to select from 100Mbps, 1Gbps, and 10Gbps leased line options. All BTnet circuits offer tiered bandwidth which reduces monthly costs. All 100Mbps service and dedicated line options are now delivered using 1Gbps Openreach tail circuits at no extra cost.

BTnet Secure and Secure Plus Options

BTnet is available with Secure and Secure Plus options. Secure provides a second circuit which is routed to the same BT PoP but with circuit separation. Secure Plus is designed to utilise a diverse second BT PoP with full circuit separation.

Monitoring and Statistics

Monitoring of BTnet circuits is available via secure login. Statistics show bandwidth utilisation over time with congestion and downtime.

BT Leased Lines for Cloud Voice Services

BT Leased Lines are ideal companions for Cloud Voice services. Voice quality and performance require good connectivity, latency, and jitter which is covered by the BTnet SLA.

Support and Fix Time

Fix time for BTnet is currently set at 5 hours with compensation if the support team is unable to fix your service. Support services are available with 24/7/365 coverage.

BTnet Express Service

Where faster delivery is required, BTnet is available to customers at specific locations. Note that the Express service is limited to 100Mbps only.

BT offers three primary contract lengths for their leased lines: 12 months, 36 months, and 60 months.

12-Month Contract

The key advantage of a shorter 12-month contract is flexibility. The take-up of the 12-month option is low, but the option is good for small businesses requiring a shorter-term contract due to financial restrictions or business changes.

36-Month Contract

A 36-month contract offers an advantage over the 12-month option in that there is no up-front installation fee. With 36-month contracts, the monthly charges for this longer contract tend to be lower than those associated with a 12-month agreement. This contract length is suited to businesses with a stable 3-year outlook who can benefit from the reduced fees and predictability of costs.

60-Month Contract

The 60-month BT leased line contract provides the most cost-effective option. As with the 36-month option, there is no installation fee for a 60-month agreement. The monthly fees for 60-month terms are the lowest of the three, offering the best long-term value for businesses committed to utilising a leased line for an extended period.

BT 100Mbps & 1Gbps Circuit

With 100Mbps, BT Openreach deliver the circuit on a 1Gbps bearer. This entry level circuit size of 100Mbps is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses that require fast and reliable internet connectivity for everyday tasks. Use cases for this speed tier include video conferencing, office productivity, and maintaining a stable internet connection during peak hours. The bandwidth can be increased up to the maximum 1Gbps bandwidth tier.

BT 10Gbps Circuit

At the highest speed option of 10Gbps, BT leased lines offers tiered speeds in increments of 100Mbps. The 10Gbps circuit is a good option for enterprises or sectors with advanced requirements and data-intensive tasks. Use cases for the 10Gbps circuit include real-time data analysis, seamless access to cloud storage, and handling vast amounts of data during peak hours.

The primary objective of BT Resilience Option 2 (RO2) is to eliminate any single point of failure from your premises to the edge of BT's network. This is achieved by adding a secondary dedicated failover leased line to your leased line solution.

Diverse routing plays a significant role in ensuring resilience. BT ensures that the primary and secondary circuits enter your building via different routes or even originate from separate exchanges to reduce the risk of both circuits being affected by the same issue.

There are two failover options provided by BT RO2:

1. Active/Passive: When the primary circuit fails, the secondary circuit automatically activates to maintain your connection.
2. Load balancing: Both primary and secondary circuits are active, with traffic distributed evenly between them.

Tail circuits extend from your building to the BT Exchange where diversity is also considered. Shared cable ducts are a potential challenge as they may leave the circuits vulnerable to the same disruption - diverse routing helps mitigate this risk.

Installation costs for BT RO2 can vary based on site survey results and the specific requirements of your premises.

The BTnet Service Level Agreement (SLA) ensures 100% service availability for dedicated leased line internet connections, with guarantees on installation timelines, network performance, and service delivery. Compensation includes rental charge reductions for service outages, missed installation dates, and network latency issues. The SLA excludes complex installations, upgrades, and circumstances beyond BT's control. Customers must report outages and claim credits within specified timeframes, with automatic rental adjustments for certain latency failures. For more details, refer to the full SLA document at BT's website.

Yes, all BTnet Leased Lines can be upgraded to the maximum limit of your bearer circuit. For example, almost all leased lines are installed using 1Gbps circuits, this means your are able to upgrade your bandwidth requirements to the maximum of1Gbps. If your business requires more than 1Gbps, you would need opt for a dual 1Gbps load balanced solution, or request an upgrade to 10Gbps.

For businesses relocating their BTnet leased line to a new office, BT will perform a site survey to evaluate connectivity from the nearest exchange. This process may take 45 to 90 days and could involve additional Openreach costs if construction work is required. Early planning is essential to reduce disruption. BT also offers assistance with transferring services such as phone numbers and cloud systems.

BT PoP (Point of Presence) locations are based in most major cities and towns. When Netify requests pricing, the BT tool will output your local PoP and any associated costs from Openreach. If you business location is one of the numerous business premises which operates outside of cities and towns, the cost will generally result in an uplift in the monthly fee due to the extended reach required from Openreach.

BTnet leased lines come with the option to provide static IP addresses, both for IPv4 and IPv6 - IP address ranges depending on the size of the business and its networking needs. The default IP address provision often includes a /29 subnet, allowing multiple devices or services to have dedicated IPs for external access. If your business requires a multi-homed configuration, BT leased lines can be setup to use AS (Autonomous System) IP addressing.

BTnet leased lines are available in major UK cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Bristol, as well as many smaller towns. Availability depends on proximity to local exchanges.

BT leased lines provide excellent network performance in terms of latency and jitter, which is needed for stable, video conferencing. The dedicated connection ensures that bandwidth is not shared with other users, maintaining consistent video and audio quality even during peak times or when the download of large files is occurring on the network.

The BT IP network performance is recognised as offering the best performance for both global and UK businesses. The majority of other ISP internet connections peer with the BT network, meaning BT also carries their traffic to enhance reach. BTnet offers five key advantages for businesses to be aware of when conducting leased line comparisons. First, BT offers excellent dedicated leased line reliability, with no shared connections and stable performance even during peak times. Second, BTnet provides high-speed, symmetrical upload and download speeds of up to 10 Gbps, with the flexibility to adjust according to business needs. Third, the service guarantees 100% target availability, backed by 24/7 UK-based support and a commitment to resolve issues within five hours. Fourth, businesses gain more control with a Cisco Meraki or Fortinet router, integrated Wi-Fi, and a user-friendly portal for monitoring. Lastly, optional BTnet Security provides firewall protection, content filtering, and threat detection.

Whether you operate a smaller business, medium to global large Enterprise, BTnet offers options for all solution requirements.

Leased lines provide a dedicated uncontended circuit with the same upload and download speeds, meaning that bandwidth is not shared with other users, resulting in stable performance even during peak times. Cloud-based services such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud all combine with BTnet to provide users with optimal connectivity conditions. BTnet also features direct peering with major cloud providers, which reduces latency and packet loss, leading to faster, more reliable access to cloud applications​. With symmetrical upload and download speeds, large data transfer, backups and real-time collaboration​ are improved.

BT operate managed data centres across the UK and globally, with a presence in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, in addition to partner locations, which include Equinix. BTnet connectivity is available up to 10 Gbps, with extremely low latency due to their on-network performance. Although less popular, businesses can still use colocation options within major hubs, which include power and cooling.

Broadband is a shared network, unlike Broadband,  BT leased lines offer dedicated circuit bandwidth to customers. Other differences include support, which offers a specialised team responsible only for BTnet services, symmetrical bandwidth, and higher bandwidth circuits, which offer up to 10 Gbps. Lastly, the BT leased line SLA offers network performance guarantees, uptime, and installation time commitments.

Connecting multiple business sites requires the addition of SD-WAN from Meraki or Fortinet, with cybersecurity options. SD-WAN secures connectivity across BTnet circuits by encrypting traffic and also optimises performance by using path selection and other capabilities to improve network performance with application QoS (Quality of Service).

Customers opting for 36 and 60-month contracts are not subject to installation costs; however, 12-month terms will include an upfront cost. Additional services, for example, cybersecurity from Meraki or Fortinet, may add additional monthly fees. The only other installation costs are associated with ECCs (Excess Construction Costs), which are required when Openreach has to conduct work to connect your site to the BT network.

Symmetrical bandwidth means the upload and download speeds are the same. This is in contrast to broadband, where the upload speed is lower than the download speed to reflect the nature of internet traffic when users typically download data.