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When evaluating whether to upgrade, consider what your current 1Gb connection is actually costing you:
Productivity Loss
If just 20 employees waste 15 minutes per day waiting for large files to transfer, cloud applications to respond, or video conferences to stabilize, that’s 5 hours of lost productivity daily. At an average employee cost of £30/hour, that’s £150 per day, or approximately £3,750 per month in wasted labor.
A 10Gb upgrade typically costs £400-£800 more per month than a 1Gb service. The productivity gains alone often exceed the additional cost.
Your competitors on 10Gb can:
• Deliver projects faster
• Collaborate more effectively with clients
• Onboard cloud services without performance concerns
• Scale their operations without infrastructure constraints
Perhaps most critically, a 1Gb connection forces you to make business decisions based on infrastructure limitations rather than market opportunities:
• You hesitate to adopt new cloud services
• You limit remote work capabilities
• You avoid video-first client engagement
• You defer digital transformation initiatives
Why the Price Difference Has Collapsed
Here’s something that might surprise you: in 2025, a 10Gb leased line costs only 2-3 times what a 1Gb connection costs in most UK locations—and with contention options, sometimes even less. Five years ago, that multiplier was closer to 10x.
Several factors have driven this change:
Infrastructure maturity – The fibre networks supporting 10Gb are now widespread across UK business districts. What was once exotic is now standard infrastructure.
Increased demand – As businesses moved to cloud-first architectures during and after the pandemic, demand for higher bandwidth exploded. Providers have responded with improved pricing.
Technological efficiency – The actual cost to providers of delivering 10Gb versus 1Gb has decreased significantly with modern optical networking equipment.
Current market pricing shows:
The difference between your current 1Gb and a 10Gb with sensible contention? Often just £200-£400 per month—less than the cost of a single employee day per month.
For the IT Manager: Technical Considerations
Network Architecture Benefits
Upgrading to 10Gb isn’t just about raw speed—it fundamentally changes how you can architect your network:
Quality of Service (QoS) becomes optional – When you have abundant bandwidth, you spend less time prioritizing traffic and more time enabling business capabilities.
Future-proofing with headroom – A 10Gb bearer gives you years of growth runway. Remember when 100Mb seemed like plenty? Your bandwidth needs will grow, and 10Gb accommodates that reality.
Simplified SD-WAN deployment – If you’re operating multiple sites, a 10Gb backbone transforms your SD-WAN capabilities, enabling seamless multi-site collaboration and centralized services.
Reduced latency under load – When your pipe is fuller, queuing delays increase. A less saturated 10Gb connection means more consistent latency for real-time applications, even during peak loads.
Installation and Bearer Options
Most 10Gb services are delivered on 10Gb bearers, but some providers offer 1Gb services on 10Gb bearers. If you’re renewing a 1Gb contract, insist on a 10Gb bearer. This gives you:
• The ability to upgrade speeds mid-contract without new installation
• Protection against mid-contract bandwidth emergencies
• Negotiating leverage for your next renewal
Installation timelines for 10Gb are typically 45-90 days, similar to 1Gb. In areas with existing 10Gb infrastructure, installations can be faster.
Making the Business Case Internally
When presenting a 10Gb upgrade to decision-makers, frame it around business outcomes, not technical specifications:
• Calculate the productivity cost of your current constraints
•Compare the marginal cost (often £200-£500/month) against employee costs
• Present it as infrastructure investment that enables revenue growth
• Highlight the risk reduction of business continuity improvements
• Quantify time savings in file transfers, backups, and system responsiveness
• Demonstrate improved customer experience through better video engagement and faster response times
• Show how it enables other initiatives like expanded remote work or new digital services
• Connect it to competitive positioning in your market
• Frame it as enabling growth rather than just solving problems
• Present the decision cost of continuing to work within 1Gb constraints
• Make it about saying “yes” to opportunities rather than managing limitations
Common Objections Answered “We’re not experiencing problems with our current 1Gb connection.”
You’re likely experiencing problems—you’ve just normalized them. Slow file transfers, degraded video quality during all-hands meetings, and cloud application lag have become “just how it is.” 10Gb doesn’t just solve problems; it removes constraints you’ve learned to work around.
“Our usage monitoring shows we’re not saturating our 1Gb connection.”
Average utilization is misleading. What matters is: (1) peak utilization, which causes user complaints, and (2) the business activities you’re not doing because you know the connection can’t handle them. You’ve shaped your behavior around the constraint.
“We can just add a second 1Gb line.”
Dual 1Gb lines create complexity: you need load balancing, session affinity becomes an issue, and you can’t actually burst a single large transfer across both lines. A single 10Gb connection is simpler, more reliable, and often cheaper than two 1Gb circuits.
“10Gb seems like overkill for our size.”
The businesses thriving in 2025 aren’t those that right-size their infrastructure to current needs—they’re the ones that overprovisioned slightly and then grew into it. Infrastructure should enable strategy, not constrain it.
The 10Gb Decision Framework
Here’s a simple framework to evaluate if you should upgrade:
• You have 50+ employees using cloud applications daily
• You regularly transfer files over 10GB
• You’ve had video quality complaints in the last quarter
• You’re planning significant cloud migrations
• Your backup windows are approaching or exceeding business hours
• You operate multiple sites that need to collaborate in real-time
• You’re renewing your leased line contract in the next 12 months
• You’re experiencing any bandwidth-related constraints
• You’re planning business growth in the next 3 years
• You want to be positioned for future opportunities rather than constantly catching up
• You’re a very small business (under 20 employees) with minimal cloud usage
• Your contract renewal is years away and early termination costs are prohibitive
• Your provider hasn’t built 10Gb infrastructure in your specific location yet (increasingly rare)
Taking Action: Your Next Steps
The market has shifted. 10Gb leased lines are no longer exotic infrastructure for data centers and tech giants—they’re becoming standard connectivity for growth-oriented businesses. The pricing has come down, the availability has gone up, and the business case has become compelling.
If you’re approaching a contract renewal, you owe it to your business to get competitive quotes for 10Gb services. Even if you decide to stay on 1Gb, understanding your options gives you negotiating leverage.
Here’s your action plan:
1. Audit your current usage patterns – Not just average utilization, but peak usage, user complaints, and workarounds your team has developed
2. Calculate your productivity cost – Be honest about time wasted waiting for infrastructure
3. Request quotes 6 months before renewal – Give yourself time to evaluate options without pressure
4. Compare like-for-like – Get quotes for 10Gb at various contention ratios from multiple providers
5. Model the business case – Treat this as a business investment, not just an IT expense
The businesses that will thrive over the next five years are those that make infrastructure decisions based on where they’re going, not where they’ve been. Your 1Gb connection served you well, but the next chapter of your growth needs something more.
The question isn’t whether you’ll eventually need 10Gb connectivity. The question is whether you’ll upgrade proactively to enable growth, or reactively when constraints become crises.
Given how affordable 10Gb has become, and given how fundamental connectivity is to every aspect of modern business, the time to explore your options is now—not when your current contract ends, and certainly not when a bandwidth crisis forces your hand.
Ready to explore what 10Gb connectivity could mean for your business? The first step is understanding what’s available in your specific location and what the real costs would be. With prices now competitive with legacy 1Gb services, and with flexible contention options making 10Gb accessible to businesses of all sizes, there’s never been a better time to future-proof your connectivity.
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