Businesses check the rent, the rates, the parking and the roof. Almost nobody checks what the building can actually get for broadband until the lease is signed and the boxes are in. That is the moment people discover the unit can only take a slow copper service, or that the only real option is a leased line costing several times what they budgeted and arriving in four months rather than four weeks.
The 30-second version
- Availability is per address, sometimes per unit. The building next door proves nothing.
- Lead time is the real risk, not price. A leased line is months, and it starts when you order.
- Check before heads of terms, while you still have the option of walking away or negotiating.
- In a shared building the landlord can be the blocker, through risers and wayleaves.
- 5G bridges the gap if you are already committed and the real line is months out.
- Your phone numbers can move with you. That part is usually the easy bit.
On this page
Why this goes wrong so often
The assumption is that fibre is everywhere now. Mostly it is, in the sense that most postcodes have something. But business connectivity is decided at the address, not the postcode, and sometimes at the individual unit. Two units on the same estate, sharing a car park, can have genuinely different options.
The other reason is that broadband is nobody's job during a move. The agent does not know. The landlord often does not know. The previous tenant knows what they had, which is useful, but not what you could have or what it would cost you now.
So the check gets left until someone needs to actually order a line, which is usually after the lease is signed and the leverage is gone.
The four things you might find
| What is available | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Full fibre | The good outcome. Fast, reasonably priced, installed in weeks. Move on and worry about something else. |
| Only SOGEA or FTTC | Workable for a small, light user. A problem if you upload: the download figure can look fine while the upload throttles everything the team does. |
| Only a leased line | Capable and reliable, but the most expensive option and the slowest to install. Budget and timeline both need rethinking. |
| Nothing usable yet | Rare but real, especially on new developments and converted buildings. You will need a bridge while something is built. |
The middle two are where the money goes. If you have budgeted for ordinary business broadband and the honest answer at that address is a leased line, you are looking at a different monthly cost and a different installation timeline, and both of those are much easier to absorb before you have committed to the building.
If it turns out SOGEA is the realistic option, that is not automatically bad. Our guide to SoGEA business broadband explains what it does well. The question is whether your upload needs fit inside it, and our comparison of leased lines, FTTC, EoFTTC and full fibre is the quickest way to work that out.
Lead time is the expensive part
Price is negotiable. Physics and civil engineering are not.
A leased line frequently needs new infrastructure built to the building, which can mean digging, permits and third party permissions. That is why lead times run into months rather than weeks, and why the clock only starts when you place the order, not when you first ask about it. Our post on how long a leased line really takes to install sets out where the time actually goes.
The practical consequence is simple. If you find out on moving day that you need a leased line, you are going to spend months running the business on something temporary. That is survivable, but it is a cost and a headache nobody planned for, and it is entirely avoidable with one check made a few weeks earlier.
The question worth asking the agent early: not "is there broadband?" but "what has been installed into this unit before, and is there a copy of any previous order or survey?" A building that has had a leased line into it before is a very different proposition from one that never has, because much of the hard work may already be done.
Shared buildings and landlords
In a multi-tenant building, serviced office or converted mill, the limiting factor is often not the street. It is getting from the point where the fibre enters the building to your floor.
That means risers, ducts and the landlord's permission, and sometimes a formal wayleave agreement before anyone will dig or pull cable. Wayleaves are a common and underestimated source of delay, because they involve a third party with no particular urgency. Our post on risers, landlords and lead times in multi-tenant buildings covers how this plays out.
Ask before you sign: who owns the riser, is there existing capacity in it, and has the landlord granted wayleaves before? A landlord who has done it twice already is a much easier prospect than one who has never been asked.
What to check, and when
- Before heads of terms. Get an availability check on the exact address. This is the moment it is worth doing, because the answer can reasonably change which building you choose or what rent you agree.
- Before you sign. If the answer is a leased line, get an actual quote and an indicative lead time, not an estimate from a website. Quotes at this stage are free and take days.
- In a shared building, before you sign. Ask about risers, existing capacity and whether wayleaves have been granted before.
- As soon as you sign. Place the order. Everything after this point is waiting, and the waiting started when you ordered, not when you asked.
- Four weeks out. Confirm the install date, and arrange a bridge if it will not be ready. Do not assume it will land on time.
- Two weeks out. Sort the numbers. Moving a phone system is usually the easy part, and our guide to keeping your business number explains why.
- Moving week. Work through the practical list in our moving day telecoms checklist so you go live on day one.
While you are at it, the energy supply at a new building has its own trap, and it is the same shape: you inherit something nobody negotiated and you are liable from day one. Our post on moving premises and your energy supply covers it.
Already signed? Your options
If you are reading this slightly too late, this is the order to work in.
- Order the permanent line today. Whatever it is going to be, the clock does not start until you do.
- Put 5G in as a bridge. A business 5G connection can be live in days rather than months, and for many businesses it carries the whole operation perfectly well in the meantime. Our post on 5G as a main business line is honest about where it works and where it does not.
- Keep the bridge afterwards as failover. Once the permanent line arrives, the 5G connection costs little to keep and becomes your backup. Our guide to automatic failover shows how to make the switchover automatic.
- If nothing is available at all, there are still routes, including alternative providers and building to the premises. Our post on no full fibre at your address runs through them.
Looking at a building? Send us the address
We will tell you exactly what can be delivered there, what each option costs, and realistically how long it would take, before you commit to anything. It takes us a day or two and it costs you nothing. It is a lot cheaper than finding out in month two.