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Connectivity Comparisons

The decisions that come up repeatedly when specifying business connectivity, each answered directly at the top and then argued properly — including the cases where the cheaper option is genuinely the right one.

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Comparisons: 12 published
Format: Answer first, then detail
Pricing: No vendor rate cards
Written by: A network operator

All comparisons

Business internet (shared) vs Dedicated Internet Access "Business internet" describes who the product is sold to; Dedicated Internet Access describes how it is engineered. A business plan on a shared access network divides capacity among subscribers and allocates a small fraction of it upstream.
Business broadband vs Dedicated fiber Broadband is a shared, asymmetric access service optimised for cost. Dedicated fiber is an engineered circuit with reserved symmetric capacity and contractual service commitments, optimised for predictability.
Dark fiber vs Lit fiber Lit fiber is a service: the provider owns the optics, sets the capacity, and carries the operational responsibility. Dark fiber is an asset lease: you take the unlit strands, attach your own equipment, and own capacity, protocol, encryption, upgrade timing, and fault isolation.
Dark fiber vs Dedicated Internet Access They are not alternatives. Dedicated Internet Access connects your organization to the internet with reserved symmetric capacity.
Point-to-point circuit vs Site-to-site VPN A site-to-site VPN encrypts traffic and sends it across the public internet, inheriting whatever latency, loss, and outages those paths have. A point-to-point circuit is a dedicated Layer 2 path between two sites with predictable performance and no internet exposure.
MPLS vs Point-to-point circuits MPLS is a provider-managed Layer 3 network: many sites join it and the provider routes between them, which scales elegantly as site count grows. Point-to-point circuits are dedicated Layer 2 links between specific site pairs that you route yourself, which gives you control and predictable performance on the paths that matter.
SIP trunking vs Hosted PBX SIP trunking connects a PBX you already own to the phone network over your internet circuit — you keep the system, the handsets, and the dial plan. Hosted PBX replaces the phone system entirely with a cloud platform the provider operates.
Cable business internet vs Fiber business internet Cable business internet is delivered over a shared coaxial access network with heavily asymmetric capacity. Fiber can be delivered either as a shared service or as a dedicated circuit — and it is the service model, not the glass, that determines performance.
Dark Fiber vs Wavelength Services Both put dedicated capacity on a fiber path between two points, but they are sold at different layers. Dark fiber is the strand itself: you supply the optics, you choose the modulation, and you own the operational responsibility.
Business Fiber vs 5G / Fixed Wireless Fixed wireless wins on speed of deployment and reach: a radio link can be live in days at an address where fiber would need months of construction, and for some sites it is the only realistic option. Dedicated fiber wins on determinism — capacity reserved for one organization, symmetric by default, and unaffected by weather, foliage, or how many subscribers joined the cell.
SIP Trunking vs PRI A PRI is a physical TDM circuit carrying a fixed number of voice channels — 23 on a standard T1-based PRI — dedicated to voice and nothing else. SIP trunking carries calls as IP traffic over a data connection, so capacity is a licensing and bandwidth question rather than a hardware one.
Dedicated Internet vs SD-WAN These are usually presented as competing purchases and they are not. Dedicated Internet Access is an underlay: a committed, symmetric circuit into one site.

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