Choosing the right broadband for your business is one of the most important infrastructure decisions you will make. Get it wrong and you face slow speeds, dropped VoIP calls, failed card transactions and staff unable to work. Get it right and it is something you never think about. This guide explains the five types of business broadband available in the UK, which suits your business, and — critically — whether you need a backup connection and a managed router.
The five types of business broadband
1. SOTAP (Standard Over The Air Protocol) — replaces ADSL
SOTAP is the modern replacement for ADSL, used where no fibre infrastructure exists. Speeds are slow by today's standards — up to 24Mbps download but only around 800Kbps upload. That said, it remains usable for small teams with modest requirements. Four to six basic users doing email and web browsing will manage fine on SOTAP, as long as nobody is streaming video, making VoIP calls, or uploading large files. If SOTAP is your only option, a mobile broadband backup is well worth considering.
2. FTTC — Fibre to the Cabinet
FTTC runs fibre to the green street cabinet, then copper from the cabinet to your premises. Download speeds up to 80Mbps are adequate for most small businesses, but the 20Mbps upload limit can be a constraint for businesses using cloud-based applications, hosted phone systems or regular large file transfers. FTTC products that include a bundled phone line are being discontinued as part of the PSTN switch-off — businesses on these products will need to move to a standalone SoGEA product or upgrade to FTTP.
3. FTTP — Fibre to the Premises (Full Fibre)
FTTP runs fibre all the way to your premises with no copper involved. Download speeds up to 1Gbps and upload speeds up to 115Mbps make it suitable for businesses of almost any size. Lower latency than FTTC makes it noticeably better for VoIP calls, video conferencing and cloud applications. Available at approximately 70% of UK premises and expanding rapidly. For most small businesses, FTTP at an appropriate speed tier is the right long-term choice.
4. Leased Line — Dedicated Fibre
A leased line is a dedicated, uncontended circuit — the bandwidth is yours alone. Upload equals download at all times, regardless of time of day. Comes with a formal SLA including a 4–5 hour fix guarantee, proactive monitoring and a managed router as standard. The right choice for businesses where downtime has a significant financial impact, or where consistent symmetric bandwidth is essential. See our full FTTP vs leased line guide for a detailed comparison.
5. Mobile Broadband — 4G and 5G
Mobile broadband uses the 4G or 5G network to deliver internet connectivity via a SIM card and a router. Speeds can be excellent in good coverage areas but vary dramatically depending on location, time of day and how many other users are on the same mast. It is an excellent backup option — particularly for sites on SOTAP where wired alternatives are limited.
Important things to be aware of with mobile broadband: it can require periodic reboots when the connection drops; an external antenna mounted on the building is often needed to get a reliable signal; and speeds can vary significantly even hour to hour. Also note that 3G is being switched off across all UK networks — any mobile broadband device that relies on 3G as a fallback will lose that capability. Make sure any device you use supports 4G as a minimum.
Quick comparison
| Type | Download | Upload | Best for | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOTAP | Up to 24Mbps | ~800Kbps | 4–6 users, email & web only | £25–35/mo |
| FTTC | Up to 80Mbps | Up to 20Mbps | Small–medium teams, general use | £30–45/mo |
| FTTP | Up to 1Gbps | Up to 115Mbps | Most businesses — recommended | £35–65/mo |
| Leased Line | 100Mbps–10Gbps | Same as download | Mission-critical, guaranteed SLA | £250–700/mo |
| Mobile 4G/5G | 10–300Mbps | 5–50Mbps | Backup, remote sites, SOTAP areas | £30–60/mo |
Your phone system depends on your broadband
This is something many businesses don't fully appreciate until it's too late. If you have a hosted VoIP phone system — which, after the PSTN switch-off, every business will need — your phone system goes down when your broadband goes down. There is no separation between the two. One line, one point of failure.
This changes the calculation around broadband resilience significantly. It is no longer just about whether staff can browse the web or access cloud files. It is about whether your business can receive and make phone calls at all.
The downtime cost question — do you need a backup?
Before deciding whether to invest in a backup connection, ask yourself one question:
This is a realistic scenario. Broadband faults happen. An Openreach engineer may not be available immediately. Over a long bank holiday weekend, a fault reported on Friday afternoon might not be resolved until Tuesday. Standard Care products have no guaranteed repair time at all.
Think about what that downtime actually costs:
- Staff unable to work — salary cost of dead time
- Phone system offline — missed calls, missed sales
- Card payments potentially failing if your terminal uses the internet
- Cloud applications inaccessible — no CRM, no email, no files
- Reputational damage if customers can't reach you
If that cost is more than £400, you need a backup connection. For most businesses that rely on their phone system and internet to operate, the answer will be yes.
Backup connections and failover — what you actually need
A backup connection protects your business when your primary line fails. But not all backup solutions are equal — and this is where many businesses make a costly mistake.
Basic failover vs true load balancing
Many consumer-grade and low-end business routers can do a basic form of failover — when one connection drops, traffic switches to the other. This sounds adequate but has a critical limitation: the router keeps only one connection active at a time. The backup connection is idle until it's needed, which means it hasn't been tested recently, and the switchover takes time — typically 30 seconds to several minutes during which your VoIP calls drop and connections are interrupted.
A properly managed router with true dual-WAN capability keeps both connections active simultaneously. It traffic shapes and load balances across both lines — prioritising VoIP traffic, distributing other traffic across both connections, and failing over instantly and seamlessly if one line goes down. Your staff notice nothing. Your phone calls continue uninterrupted.
Use different providers for your two connections
If both your primary and backup connections use the same underlying network infrastructure — for example, both using Openreach — a major Openreach outage or a fault in the local exchange takes out both simultaneously. A true backup solution uses different providers with different underlying networks. For example, FTTP on Openreach as primary and 4G mobile as backup — these are completely independent infrastructure paths, so a fault on one cannot affect the other.
Make sure the supplier you choose has access to more than one provider and can supply a router capable of traffic shaping and load balancing across both connections.
The managed router — why it matters more than you think
A managed router is supplied, configured and supported by your provider. If it develops a fault, your provider replaces it under the service agreement. This sounds straightforward, but the implications of getting it wrong are significant.
If you use an unmanaged or self-supplied router and it fails, you are responsible for diagnosing the fault, sourcing a replacement, and reconfiguring it — potentially from scratch. This can take a day or more, during which your entire business connectivity is down. All the broadband in the world is useless if the router sitting between it and your network has failed.
Some businesses take resilience a step further:
- Spare router on site — a pre-configured backup router kept in a drawer. If the primary router fails, it can be swapped in within minutes rather than waiting for a courier delivery
- Spare power supply on site — router power supplies occasionally fail and are a surprisingly common cause of apparent broadband outages. A spare eliminates this as a single point of failure
- UPS (uninterruptible power supply) — keeps the router powered during a mains power cut, maintaining connectivity when staff are using laptops or mobile devices
Static IP addresses — an important consideration for failover
If your business uses a static IP address — for example, for inbound VPN connections, hosted services, remote access, or any system that needs to be reached at a fixed address — failover introduces a complication you must plan for.
When your primary connection fails and traffic switches to your backup connection, your IP address changes. The static IP assigned to your primary line does not follow you to the backup. Any system that relies on connecting to your static IP — remote workers connecting via VPN, suppliers connecting to your server, CCTV remote monitoring — will stop working until your primary connection is restored.
Solutions exist — DNS failover, BGP routing, or cloud-hosted VPN endpoints that remain accessible regardless of which connection is active — but these need to be planned and configured before a failure occurs, not during one. Discuss your static IP requirements with your broadband provider when designing your resilience solution.
Frequently asked questions
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