Are leased lines on their last legs?

Comparative pricing between leased lines and other technologies are tricky, though, as the cost of the former can vary depending on individual circumstances like location. Generally speaking, leased lines are relatively cheaper to supply in a major city like London, although it will ultimately depend on what kind of network an operator has in your area.

With BT's leased line market worth an estimated £100m per year, it's clear that thousands of companies are still relying on them. But there is evidence that the tide has turned.

Eclipse Internet conducted a survey of 100 IT managers earlier this year and found that precisely none of them were planning to choose a leased line in the future, even though 74 of them currently used them. Eclipse found that ADSL was the most popular choice today, suggesting that companies are prepared to accept downtime and contended links if they can save money by doing so.

Another option worth considering is Thus' National Ethernet product. Launched at the start of this year, National Ethernet links local area networks together at much higher speeds than are usually possible with a leased line WAN or a DSL connection.

This Ethernet connection can be 10Mbps, 100Mbps or even into the gigabit per second territory, and comes with a 99.9 percent SLA.

It could be used for point-to-point links -- perhaps between two regional offices -- or point-to-multipoint, such as when several satellite sites are linked to headquarters to enable the transfer of large amounts of data to and from the main company servers.

Thus recently sold its 1,000th National Ethernet link, and the service appears to be particularly popular with educational establishments. For a smaller company, though, the cost could be prohibitive.

Thus has published sample pricing, which shows that a 100Mbps link between two sites in Edinburgh would cost £7,000 per year with a £9,000 installation charge, while a 1Gbps connection between two London locations would cost £30,000 per year plus £20,000 to set it up. Connections between cities are considerably more expensive.

It seems therefore that if your current connectivity solution is coming up for renewal or you've been given the task of setting up a new office, it's important to assess precisely the level of speed and reliability that you need. If you feel you could cope with a more variable connection -- both in speed and uptime -- then take a serious look at the range of ADSL and SDSL packages on the market. If hyper-fast connectivity between sites is a must, then it might be worth calling Thus to ask how much a National Ethernet service would cost. But it's crucial to always have access to a certain amount of bandwidth, there may well be some life left in the leased line after all.