Leased line advice

Ish · 12 Nov 2015 at 18:52

Hi

I wasn't sure if this should go in here but it's more business related so I have.

What are the pros/cons of a fixed leased line vs a wireless leased line?

I'm helping a friend source one and he is looking at at a 50Mbps line in both wired and wireless options.

Caged · 12 Nov 2015 at 19:52

The pros and cons will be vendor specific rather than a limitation in the technology.

Wireless can be installed quicker, at less expense (no digging), isn't able to be dug through, and is usually cheaper. Sometimes the latency is higher than a fibre optic link.

An actual fibre tends to be more reliable (not affected by atmospheric or RF interference issues), but takes longer to install and costs more.

Really you need to compare the two offerings as opposed to just the technology. The wireless provider might not offer an uncontended service on busy towers for example, or the SLAs might be poorer.

Steveocee · 12 Nov 2015 at 20:11

Caged said:
The pros and cons will be vendor specific rather than a limitation in the technology.

Wireless can be installed quicker, at less expense (no digging), isn't able to be dug through, and is usually cheaper. Sometimes the latency is higher than a fibre optic link.

An actual fibre tends to be more reliable (not affected by atmospheric or RF interference issues), but takes longer to install and costs more.

Really you need to compare the two offerings as opposed to just the technology. The wireless provider might not offer an uncontended service on busy towers for example, or the SLAs might be poorer.

^^^ Answer of the century. Hit it on the button in one.

Why do you need a leased line? Is it something the business can't run without internet? Does bandwidth amount matter? Is it scalable in time? SLA's as most wireless providers you may find don't quote actual SLA times.

Caged · 12 Nov 2015 at 20:28

To expand on the above, a wireless provider can't offer uncontended service if they are using unlicensed frequencies, as they have no control of channel usage. You could find a competitor starts running a bunch of wireless radios across all the available channels to give you interference issues, and as long as the power wasn't exceeding legal limits, Ofcom wouldn't care. If you're going wireless make sure it's using licensed spectrum.

Ish · 12 Nov 2015 at 22:04

Thanks for the advice...it's much appreciated.

The business is based in an area where the fastest connection they can get is ADSL2 and it's affecting the operation of the business.

The wireless service would be from http://www.metronet-uk.com/products/wireless-leased-line/ and their SLA is very good.

For the wired leased line there are a few options which are the same price as the wireless but they don't include any Excess Construction Charges and running a cable through an inner city area of Birmingham I can imagine these being quite high!

nutcase · 12 Nov 2015 at 22:10

Never heard of a wireless leased line. Can they get EFM?

Caged · 12 Nov 2015 at 22:39

I would ask Metronet to provide you with some reference customers that are happy to be contacted about the service. But if they are willing to commit to a guaranteed 4 hour fix then it would suggest they are serious. I would ask questions about this because I can't see how all faults with one of their base sites could possibly be resolved in 4 hours (e.g. a fire where they are denied access until a criminal investigation has taken place).

Is your client in a building that might already have fibre in, or is it a totally new installation?

pepp77 · 12 Nov 2015 at 22:50

With a guaranteed fix claim, any fix that takes longer leads to compensation to the customer, at least that's how it works with our leased line.

Ish · 12 Nov 2015 at 22:59

nutcase_1uk said:
Never heard of a wireless leased line. Can they get EFM?

No EFM

Caged said:
I would ask Metronet to provide you with some reference customers that are happy to be contacted about the service. But if they are willing to commit to a guaranteed 4 hour fix then it would suggest they are serious. I would ask questions about this because I can't see how all faults with one of their base sites could possibly be resolved in 4 hours (e.g. a fire where they are denied access until a criminal investigation has taken place).

Is your client in a building that might already have fibre in, or is it a totally new installation?

They have provided some references from AO.com etc.

It's an old building with just his business in it.

pepp77 said:
With a guaranteed fix claim, any fix that takes longer leads to compensation to the customer, at least that's how it works with our leased line.

Yes, that's what the small print says.

One other question I have is with regards to wired leased lines. If you had a leased line from Company A and 3 years later decide to move to company B would company B use the same cable or run a new cable?

nutcase · 13 Nov 2015 at 08:08

The credits you get they usually make you jump through hoops to get - supply tracerts etc.

When we changed supplier we had new connectivity throughout to avoid downtime - this was standard - although the two existing fibre connections that just meant they used spare fibres in the existing.

EFM is just phone lines so they often exist already as well.

Felix · 13 Nov 2015 at 10:21

The compensation will be peanuts too. When our leased line went down for around 12 hours overnight (for the first time in 12 years!) the credit was tiny.

Sir SpankalotUK · 13 Nov 2015 at 17:15

Word of warning: do NOT order from BT, they are useless. It took 11 months to install our fibre and thats after the chairmans complaint dept got involved (once they were involved it took 3 months to finalise). And this is in London E2.

But once installed it is nice a snappy. Pinging google.co.uk is a nice 2ms.

Caged · 13 Nov 2015 at 22:11

You don't have a choice most of the time - whatever provider you pick is more than likely going to be an Openreach EAD product back to the exchange. The exceptions are some providers will put you on a Virgin Media fibre (this has nothing to do with the cable modem service), or in London you could be on Colt.

nutcase · 14 Nov 2015 at 06:53

This is very true. I do find it strange that Talktalk business (fortunately an improvement over the domestic side!) offers EFM circuits in significantly more areas than BT - yet they are all installed by BT Openreach...

Virgin can be frustrating - we paid a huge excess construction cost to get fibre to our head office (through a re-seller) - then they had the barefaced cheek to cold call us and say that as someone had paid the expensive bit for getting fibre to the village so we could get it too with no excess costs!

Ish · 15 Nov 2015 at 16:11

It's looking like Metronet at the moment as there will be no ECC and as the business would have qualified for the connected cities voucher grant which was prematurely ended Metronet are offering a good deal in place of this.

R.O.S.S.I · 16 Nov 2015 at 15:32

Brother in law works for Metronet and is always singing the praises of their wireless solutions. They supply wireless connections to quite a lot of big companies in and around Manchester so I imagine they are pretty good and know what they are doing.

16-bit · 18 Nov 2015 at 14:55

Felix said:
The compensation will be peanuts too. When our leased line went down for around 12 hours overnight (for the first time in 12 years!) the credit was tiny.

Defiantly, also you could have regular short outages through the day and that would still be under the 4 hours + 99.95% uptime threshold.

Compensation never equals the money lost from downtime.

Liquidfox · 22 Nov 2015 at 21:59

Also if it's anything like LiveWave that's in the North East it has to be re-aligned at least once a year and will be affected by snow.

We once had an issue whereby the owners of the building where the main antenna is situated went into administration, this meant no re-alignment for at least a few months whilst the access was sorted. There was then an issue of a contractor chopping some core cable and knocking the infrastructure off again for 48 hours.

Just because it's wireless doesn't mean it isn't at risk of idiots breaking the core network.

Ish · 17 Dec 2015 at 22:05

Just to give an update. The Metronet leased wireless line was fitted. Speed is a solid 50Mbps up/down and so far there have been no issues even in the recent poor weather. There was a slight delay in install time as they had to apply for an licence from Ofcom as they used a microwave 'thingy' on the roof.

NickTheBiz · 23 Dec 2015 at 09:01

Ish said:
Just to give an update. The Metronet leased wireless line was fitted. Speed is a solid 50Mbps up/down and so far there have been no issues even in the recent poor weather. There was a slight delay in install time as they had to apply for an licence from Ofcom as they used a microwave 'thingy' on the roof.

Good to hear, didn't even know wireless was an option!

Even though I swore I'd never touch BT again, we have a 100Mb leased ilne, which was a nightmare to get installed. 6-9 months IIRC. Which further reinforced my view.

Then we got a second leased line (Virgin this time) last year and that was just as problematic if not worse. Support far poorer too IMO, although I've not had a problem with BT and had to call them to be fair.