Pricing
Real ranges where we can give them, and a plain explanation of what moves the price where we cannot. No form to fill in before you see a number.
The main question
It comes down to one word: contention. It explains most of the price difference in connectivity, and once you understand it the quotes stop looking arbitrary.
What you are really buying at the top end is not speed. It is certainty.
Capacity back to the network is shared with other businesses and homes nearby. You buy a portion, so the cost of the infrastructure is shared out and your share is cheap.
The circuit is yours end to end. Nothing you experience depends on what your neighbours are doing, and you fund the whole thing rather than a share.
Installation
A leased line quote arrives in two halves. The monthly rental is known straight away. The build is not, because until somebody has looked in the ground, nobody knows what is actually down there.
Standard installation is normally built into the monthly figure across the term, so most sites pay nothing separately on day one. Every carrier includes a construction allowance inside that standard price.
Where the physical build costs more than the allowance covers, the carrier raises an Excess Construction Charge. It is a one-off, it is quoted in writing with a breakdown, and it reaches you before anything is dug or ordered. If you decline it, the order stops there. You will not receive an installation bill you have not already seen and agreed.
How the survey works
Nobody visits. The carrier checks the records it already holds for the ground between its nearest fibre node and your postcode.
The output is a provisional price and, where the records look awkward, an early warning that a construction charge may follow.
An engineer attends and walks the route the cable will actually take, outside and in. This is the visit that finds the money.
What the survey found now has to become permissions, before a spade goes anywhere near the ground.
What actually generates a construction charge
The records show a usable route. The survey finds it silted, crushed or already full. Clearing or replacing it is civil engineering, and it is the most common surprise of the lot.
Nothing currently serves the building, so duct has to be dug, laid and chambered from the nearest available point. The cost scales with the metres involved.
Digging a footpath or carriageway needs a council permit, reinstatement to the specification the council sets, and sometimes night or weekend working on a busy road.
Every extra metre of trench and cable between you and the nearest fibre point is chargeable build. It is the single biggest reason two neighbours get different numbers.
Crossing land owned by a third party, or an estate owned by your landlord, needs written permission. It costs little to ask for and can add weeks to the programme.
Risers, containment, core drilling between floors, and fire-stopping wherever the cable passes through a compartment wall.
An Excess Construction Charge is not a penalty and it is not margin. It is simply the amount by which the physical build exceeds the allowance that is already inside the standard price. Ask any provider for the breakdown behind it. A reasonable one will hand it straight over.
We read the desktop survey before we quote, and we tell you honestly if your address looks likely to attract one, rather than letting you discover it six weeks into an order.
What you will pay
Phones and mobile are priced predictably, so here they are. Connectivity depends on your address, which is the next section.
All prices shown exclude VAT. Hosted VoIP is priced per user, per month.
The lower end is a straightforward business phone: calls, voicemail, an app. The upper end is everything, including call handling, reporting and integrations that most businesses only partly need.
A desk phone for most business users. You do not always need one. Plenty of our customers run on the desktop and mobile apps and buy handsets only for reception.
The range reflects data, roaming and whether you need multi-network coverage. A van-based team needs something very different from a director living on video calls.
Entirely down to make and model. Plenty of business users are well served at the bottom of that range, and we will say so rather than steering you to a flagship.
Why quotes differ
Broadband and leased lines are the two we will not put a range on, because a range would mislead you. These are what actually move the figure.
Common questions
Because the price depends on your address more than the product. Distance from the infrastructure, whether usable duct reaches the building and what construction work is needed can change the figure enormously between two premises on the same street. A published price would be wrong for most readers.
It depends what being offline costs you. If card payments, orders and phones all run over one connection and a day down would be serious, the guarantees are worth paying for. If an outage is merely an inconvenience, good broadband with 4G or 5G failover usually makes better sense of the money.
The capacity back to the network is shared with other users in your area, which is why standard broadband is cheap and why speeds are quoted as "up to". An uncontended connection is reserved entirely for you, so what you get does not change with the time of day.
No. The desktop and mobile apps do everything a handset does, and many customers buy handsets only for reception or people who prefer a physical phone. It is a common way to cut the up-front cost of moving to hosted.
Sometimes. Porting numbers and standard configuration are usually included. Physical installation, new cabling and any construction needed to bring a line into the building are quoted separately because they vary so much by site. We tell you before you order.
It is a one-off charge raised when the physical build needed to reach your building costs more than the construction allowance already included in the standard leased line price. Blocked duct, a long distance to the nearest fibre point, highway digging or a brand new route are the usual causes. It is always quoted in writing with a breakdown before anything is ordered, and you can decline it.
The desktop survey checks records for distance, existing duct and spare fibre. The site survey sends an engineer to look at where fibre can enter the building, whether the footpath duct is clear or collapsed, the condition of the chambers, the internal cable run and riser, and where the terminating equipment will sit. What the engineer finds is what sets the construction figure.
Usually. Send us a recent bill and we will tell you plainly whether it looks reasonable. If you are already on a fair deal we will say that too, rather than inventing a saving.
Send us a postcode and a recent bill. We will check every network that reaches you and tell you honestly what is available and what it costs.
