Leased Line

a leased line, or sometimes called a private circuit, is a dedicated, permanent (or semi-permanent) connection between two end points, for example between a remote office and the companies head office. Leased lines are attraxctive to companies that have a lot of traffic between fixed poiints. They can, for example, be used to connect the telephone exchange (the PABX) at two sites so that calls can be made internally, bypassing the public network and hence avoid call charges. Because leased lines can provide a much higher capacity than the public network, leased lines are also very useful for connecting a company's local area networks (LAN) of different locations to form one big internal network.

Leased lines are charged based on the flat rate principle, i.e. users pay a flat fee (a rent) for the line, no matter how much the line is used. Charging depends on the capacity of the line and the distance between the end points.

Leased lines can offer a capacity of 64 kbps up to 2, 8, 34, 140 Mbit/s, or even higher. The higher capacity leased lines use dedicated fibres, cables or microwave links. The lower capacity lines use shared infrastructure.