Four names, sold by the same providers, over cables that sometimes run down the same street. No wonder the quotes make no sense next to each other. The real differences are not really about speed. They are about whether you share the line, what is promised when it breaks, and how fast your uploads are. Here is the plain version.
The 30-second version
- FTTC is fibre to the green cabinet, copper to you. Shared, cheap, slow uploads.
- EoFTTC is the same cabinet technology sold with business terms: faster upload, a repair commitment, better value than a leased line for some sites.
- Full fibre (FTTP) is fibre all the way in. Fast both ways, still shared, usually the right answer now.
- A leased line is yours alone, symmetrical, with a contracted fix time and compensation if it is missed.
- The question is not speed. It is what happens on a bad day, and how much you upload.
On this page
The one idea that explains all four
Every one of these is fibre for most of its journey. What separates them is three things, and once you can see those three, the quotes start making sense.
- Is the capacity shared? On most business broadband you share capacity with other users. That is why speeds dip at busy times. A leased line is not shared with anyone.
- Is it symmetrical? Upload speed matters far more than most businesses realise. Cloud backups, video calls, sending large files and hosting anything at all are all upload. Most broadband gives you a fraction of the download speed for upload. Leased lines and EoFTTC give you the same both ways.
- What is promised when it breaks? This is the big one. Broadband is repaired on a best-efforts basis, which can mean days. A leased line carries a contracted fix time, typically measured in hours, with money back if it is missed.
Speed is the thing on the advert. The other three are the thing you buy.
FTTC: fibre to the cabinet
Fibre runs to the green street cabinet, then copper covers the last stretch to your building. Typically up to around 80Mbps down and 20Mbps up, though both fall away the further you are from the cabinet.
Where it still makes sense: small sites, light use, a backup line, or somewhere full fibre has not arrived. It is the cheapest option and often the only one available.
Where it hurts: uploads. Twenty megabits shared across a team doing video calls and cloud backups is where the "our internet is slow" complaints come from, and the download figure on the bill looks fine the whole time. If you are on FTTC and the line is tied to a traditional phone service, you should also read our guide to the PSTN switch off, because that arrangement is ending.
EoFTTC: the one nobody explains
Ethernet over FTTC uses the same cabinet and the same copper, but delivered as a business Ethernet service rather than consumer broadband. In practice that means a symmetrical speed, often up to 20Mbps each way, with a business grade repair commitment behind it.
It sits in an awkward middle: slower headline numbers than full fibre, but with the upload and the assurances full fibre does not give you. It earns its place in two situations.
- A leased line is too expensive or too slow to install at that site, and you still need the upload and the fix times.
- Full fibre is not available and the site genuinely cannot tolerate a best-efforts repair.
Where full fibre is available, it usually wins on value. EoFTTC is the answer to a specific problem rather than a default.
Full fibre: fibre to the premises
Fibre all the way into the building, no copper. Speeds commonly from 100Mbps to 1Gbps and beyond, with upload speeds far better than FTTC, though usually still slower than download.
It is shared capacity, and it is repaired on broadband terms rather than a contracted fix time. For the large majority of businesses that is a perfectly sensible trade, because you get a great deal of speed for a fraction of a leased line price.
If a full fibre install is in front of you, our guide to business broadband options covers what to expect. Worth knowing: the speed on the advert is the line speed, not what each person gets. Our explainer on Mbps, latency and ping is the short version of why.
Leased lines: the uncontended one
A dedicated circuit between your building and the provider's network. Not shared with anybody. The same speed up and down. And critically, a service level agreement with a contracted fix time and compensation when it is missed.
You are buying certainty rather than speed. A 100Mbps leased line and a 100Mbps full fibre connection are not the same product, even though the number matches, because one of them is yours and comes with a promise attached. If those two are the only options on your table, our page on leased line vs full fibre goes further into that specific choice.
The honest downsides: cost, and install time. A leased line often needs civil works, which is why lead times run to months rather than weeks. Our posts on what a leased line costs and how long installation takes go into the detail.
Side by side
| FTTC | EoFTTC | Full fibre | Leased line | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last stretch | Copper | Copper | Fibre | Fibre |
| Shared? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Upload | Much slower than download | Same as download | Slower than download | Same as download |
| Fix time | Best efforts | Contracted | Best efforts | Contracted, with compensation |
| Typical install | Days to weeks | Weeks | Weeks | Months |
| Relative cost | Lowest | Middle | Low for the speed | Highest |
A note on the numbers. Deliberately no speed figures in that table beyond the ones above, because what is actually available depends entirely on your postcode, your distance from the cabinet and what has been built in your street. Any comparison that quotes exact speeds without checking your address is guessing.
Which one you actually need
Four questions, in order. The first one you answer yes to is usually your answer.
- Would an outage of a day or more seriously damage the business? Think card payments, a busy phone room, anything where the doors effectively close. If yes, you need a contracted fix time: leased line, or EoFTTC where a leased line does not fit. Alternatively, keep the broadband and add a proper backup, which our guide to automatic failover to mobile broadband covers and which costs a fraction of the difference.
- Do you upload heavily? Cloud backups, CCTV offsite, design or video files, hosting your own systems. If yes, symmetrical matters and FTTC will frustrate you regardless of the download figure.
- Is full fibre available at the address? If yes and the first two were no, take it. Best value by a distance.
- None of the above? FTTC is fine, and worth revisiting when full fibre reaches you.
One thing worth saying plainly: a surprising number of businesses quoted for a leased line actually need full fibre plus a 5G backup. That combination gives most of the resilience for a fraction of the cost, and we will tell you when that is the case rather than sell you the bigger thing.
Not sure which one your address can actually get?
Give us the postcode and we will tell you what is genuinely available, what each option would cost, and which one we would put in if it were our own business. No obligation.