Waiting for a Leased Line? How to Get Your Site Online Now

You have signed for a leased line, agreed a move date and told the team. Then the provider comes back with a survey, a wayleave and an “estimated” live date that is later than your move. This is normal, and it is fixable.

Why leased lines take so long

A leased line is a dedicated fibre from your premises back into the provider’s network. If fibre is not already at the building, someone has to build it. That can mean surveys, landlord permission, wayleaves from neighbouring owners, road closures and civil engineering. Each stage has its own queue.

Lead times of several months are common, and longer when civils are involved. Delays after the order are common too, because many issues only appear once the survey is done.

Your options while you wait

Do nothing and delay the move

Sometimes possible, often expensive. Rent is already running and the old premises may not be available.

Consumer broadband or phone hotspots

Fine for a day or two, not for a team. Consumer services are not built for business traffic and hotspots drain phones and data allowances fast.

4G or 5G business broadband

Quick and cost-effective where signal is strong. A business router with a good SIM, and an external antenna if needed, can handle a small office comfortably. See 4G and 5G business broadband.

LEO satellite

Fibre-like performance anywhere with a clear sky view, and independent of local mobile signal. Good for larger teams and heavy cloud use. See business satellite broadband.

Satellite with 4G/5G backup

Both paths on one router, with automatic failover. This is the setup we recommend most often for pre-ethernet, because it copes with the unexpected on a site you do not know well yet.

Plan for the delay, not the date

The biggest mistake is buying interim connectivity sized to the provider’s first estimate. Agree up front how extensions work, so a slipped date does not become a new contract negotiation.

Do not pay for it twice

When the leased line finally goes live, the interim connection does not have to go. A single fibre is still a single point of failure. Keeping the satellite or 4G/5G link on the same router as automatic backup turns a temporary cost into permanent resilience.

Next steps

See our pre-ethernet broadband options, or tell us the site and dates and we will check coverage.