Despite the advent of faster (ish) broadband the demand for leased lines is on the up. At least that is a trend we are seeing at Timico. This is evidenced by the statistic that in one day last week we received 32 (that’s thirty two) requests to quote for a leased line from our existing customer base.

You might argue that 32 quotes from a base of ten thousand or so businesses is not much but I’m telling you it is. That is the annualised equivalent of 8,320 leased lines in one working year, assuming no one takes a holiday but doesn’t work weekends.

Now we don’t get that number of RFQs every day, it would be great if we did. Also this is a recent statistic so they will not yet all have turned into orders although I’m sure that a significant proportion will do so.

It does point to a growing demand though. Businesses’ need for stable higher bandwidth is on the up as they have more and more internet (or at least Internet Protocol running on private networks) based communications that they rely on. With the best will in the world broadband (ADSL) is not going to give the same degree of reilability as a leased line, but there again it is significantly cheaper.

One huge opportunity for TImico is the massive installed base of BT leased lines. I read somewhere recently that this amounted to around 118,000 installations. Most of these leased lines will likely be 2Mbps connections that have been installed for donkeys years and are now well out of contract.

You can bet your bottom dollar that BT will not have mentioned that IP bandwidth costs have plummeted in the same timeframe. The chances are the typical BT leased line customer is still paying the same for the service that he or she was five years ago. This represents a serious opportunity for fast growing outfits like Timico.

If anyone out there needs advice on their leased line needs just drop me  line or leave a comment and I’ll sort out an independant assessment.