Leased Line Internet Connectivity
Why Purchase a Leased Line?
Delivering High Speeds
If you have a requirement for high speed you can’t get any faster or more consistent speed other than via a leased line.
Years ago these may have been purely for large businesses who could afford them, but today with prices continuing to
fall, and the reliance of an Internet feed in business, these are becoming an essential tool in modern business.
Future Proof
With our fibre leased lines we can provide a large bearer to provide you with faster speeds in the future. For example,
we may deliver a 100Mbps bearer, and cap your speeds to 20Mbps. This results in a cheaper monthly cost to you
initially, and should you wish to increase the speed in years to come we can
speed it up closer to the 100Mbps physical limit of the fibre supplied.
No Usage Limits
Leased lines are supplied without any form of traffic restriction or usage limit. You can download at full speed
all day, every day, regardless of what that traffic be made up of.
Consistent Speeds 24/7/365
Our leased lines are supplied without contention restrictions. We don’t oversubscribe our network and therefore the
bandwidth you purchase is used solely by your organisation. You can now avoid peak time exchange congestion,
or one-off events (eg Olympics) from affecting the speeds you achieve.
Service Level Agreement
Service level agreements are in place to ensure that regardless of the fault, or time of day, you will have members
of staff from both ICUK and our carriers working on the issue. Time limits are clearly stated, and in the
event an unsatisfactory resolution is put in place service credits are applied to your account. These should
provide you with the peace of mind that you will get the best from us when you need us the most.
Proactive Monitoring
As standard we proactively monitor your connections. Alerts are sent to Lucid Systems staff via SMS, which can be
reciprocated to your staff too.
Leased lines can be delivered through a range of technologies, each offering different monthly costs, different speeds
and different service level agreements to suit different businesses. To find the best fit for you, look through
our guide and assess the functionality against your needs.
Fibre
Fibre can provide your business with a dedicated connection to the Internet and deliver the ultimate in broadband
connectivity. They are not shared or contended with on the ISP network ensuring you get consistently fast broadband
connection all day, every day. As well as offering 1:1 contention the speeds are symmetrical, so unlike with
ADSL or FTTx the upstream and download speeds are the same. This can open up options to use your connections
for more applications.
Ethernet First Mile (EFM)
EFM technology is perfect for any business that is looking for cost effective, high bandwidth connectivity to the
Internet. It sits between ADSL (which can be limiting depending on your location) and a full leased line (which
can be prohibitively expensive to small business). It makes use of multiple bonded copper pairs (up to a maximum
of 8) providing speeds of up to 35Mbps. These speeds are symmetrical ensuring you have the same up and downstream
speeds, making it perfect for VoIP calls or when handling large amounts of data. The multiple bonded pairs also
offer resilience, in as much as should one or multiple pairs develop a fault, the connectionstill operates albeit
at a slower speed.
Generic Ethernet Access (GEA)
GEA uses FTTC and FTTP technologies to provide a non-contended path to the Internet. By 2014 about two thirds of
the UK will be able to receive this technology. It’s comparatively low cost to install, speedy delivery times,
and higher headline speeds compared to EFM make it a compelling option to consider if it’s available in your
area. Unlike fibre leased lines or EFM, it doesn’t benefit from symmetrical speeds for uploads and downloads.
It comes in three variations with the ultimate speed being determined by the quality and length of your line
in much the same way you would expect from traditional ADSL or FTTC. Where it differs itself is in the consistency
of speed as it isn’t subjec