Leased Lines: What Are Your Options if Something Goes Wrong?

Leased lines have a pretty solid reputation for providing a fast, reliable internet connection – and rightly so! Leased lines are currently the must-have service for growing businesses in the UK, with many companies opting to upgrade from older, slower ADSL connections to facilitate more streamlined communications and an increase in overall productivity. As a general rule, we can expect nothing but the best from leased lines, but let’s be honest here – faults on the line can happen, and they do sometimes happen. As a business, you want peace of mind that should a fault pop up, you’ll always be connected. So just what are your options should a fault occur with your leased lines? What’s your backup plan?

Fear not! Businesses who opt to upgrade to leased lines from ADSL have many options available to them to ensure they’re protected should a fault occur, and minimise the risk of being left without a solid connection. Here are just a few ways that your business can take measures to stay connected at all times:

Service Availability and SLA

One of the best ways to minimise the risk of being affected by faults on leased lines is to opt for a provider not only with excellent service availability, but also with service availability that is backed up with a solid service level agreement (SLA). In terms of service availability, your business should be looking for at least 99.95 percent, although some contracts do offer a 100 percent service availability. Service level agreements will vary between providers, but generally a fault on the line should be fixed within 5 to 7 hours. Service availability and SLA will usually be included as standard with your contract.
For further peace of mind, businesses may wish to opt for a provider who offers a number of additional extras for a higher level of protection. While these may cost more, they can help minimise risk:

Failover

Opting for failover means that you’ll have two leased lines installed to your premises, both capable of transferring the same amount of data. On a day-to-day basis, only one of these leased lines will be utilised. However, should a fault occur on the line, your service will be transferred to the ‘spare’ line and you will continue to receive the same upload and download speeds that you usually receive.

Backup

Backup is a very similar plan to failover, although the service you receive will be slightly different. With backup, two leased lines will be installed, with one reserved as a spare for emergency situations. However, the spare line will typically be smaller and able to carry less data, which means that in the event of a fault, your business will receive slightly slower upload and download speeds than usual.

Load Balancing

Load balancing is a very popular form of backup plan for leased lines, and again involves the installation of two leased lines at the premises. Both leased lines tend to be smaller, grouping together to provide the desired upload and download speeds. Both leased lines are utilised on a day-to-day basis, with data ‘load balanced’ between the two. In the event of a fault on one line, the other can continue to be used.