Business internet. It’s never just internet.
A plain-English guide to picking the right service for your company — and the right provider to deliver it.
You need internet. Or you think you do.
You need internet for the office. Or you think you do. Then the salesperson asks how much bandwidth, and which cloud providers, and whether you want a backup line, and whether the cheap option’s already congested in your area, and you realise you don’t know the answers — and you also don’t trust the person asking.
That’s normal. The market trains buyers to compare price-per-megabit, and most of the questions that matter aren’t on the quote.
Six questions worth answering before you pick a provider.
The order isn’t accidental — the first two shape everything that follows. These are the questions a good advisor walks through with you. They’re also the questions a leased-line salesperson tends to skip.
Four realistic shapes for a UK business internet service.
The right shape depends on what you’re doing, where you are, and how long the contract needs to last.
Asymmetric speeds. Cheap on month one. Less suitable when you need guaranteed bandwidth, low latency, or symmetric upload.
Symmetric, dedicated, contended only at the ISP layer. The cost compounds across the contract — that’s the bit to watch.
Your fibre, your kit, your bandwidth.
A long-term lease that behaves commercially like ownership without the asset on your balance sheet.
Three things the standard quote tends to skip over.
Excess Construction Charges
Roughly 85% of leased-line quotes contain unlisted ECCs, averaging £1,000 to £10,000 per site. We publish budgetary ranges where we can, and we put any expected ECC in writing before you sign. If we’re wrong, we wear it.
Diversity that isn’t diverse
Two carriers entering through different meet-me points can share the same external duct for considerable distances. We run route audits and use GIS-mapped pinpointing through RADAR to show you what the actual diversity looks like, not what the diagram claims.
Sixteen-week installs
The published industry average for a 1Gbps leased line is 60–120 working days. We’ve seen worse. Our same-week turnaround is for the budgetary quote and getting a surveyor on site — the install itself comes down to civils and wayleaves, which we cost and timeline before you sign.
Ask4. Eleven cities. Owned outright.
Ask4 chose Sicom as preferred provider of dark fibre across York, Bath, Southampton, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Falmouth, Sheffield, Nottingham, Cardiff and Birmingham. Eleven cities. Multiple residential buildings per site. Total Care via our RADAR platform — out-of-band monitoring every few seconds, GIS-mapped to the route.
Different shape to a leased-line buy. Same problem at the start — buildings to connect, bandwidth required, a contract that needed to make commercial sense for years.
“The use of multi-core dark fibre cables allows us to benefit from instant scalability. Ownership of the fibre fixes the costs and provides a saving or 50% or more over the projected life of the contract.” — Ask4Read the Ask4 UK-wide case study
It’s just internet access — isn’t it?
The full SICOM buyer’s guide. Every question worth answering before you sign a business internet contract — written down, in plain English, so you can take it into the decision.
- FTTP, leased line, dark fibre or IRU — which shape fits, and when
- The questions a leased-line salesperson tends to skip
- How to spot false diversity and hidden Excess Construction Charges
The same questions, in more detail.
There’s a longer version of this page — the full SICOM guide to buying the right business internet service.
See all free guides