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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: 8 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.

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