Small Business Phone and Broadband Guide: What You Need to Know

What Small Businesses Actually Need

For most small businesses, the connectivity requirement is straightforward: a reliable internet connection and a means of receiving and making business phone calls. The technical landscape for both has changed considerably in recent years.

On the broadband side, full fibre FTTP is now widely available and competitively priced, making it the natural choice in most areas. On the telephony side, the ISDN switch-off completed in December 2025 means all new business phone lines are now delivered over VoIP — internet-based calling — rather than the traditional copper telephone network.

Business Broadband Options for Small Businesses

FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet)

FTTC is the legacy fibre broadband technology — still available at the majority of UK premises and still adequate for very small offices with light internet usage. Typical speeds: 40-80Mbps download, 10-20Mbps upload. Monthly cost: from £25-£45 on a business contract.

FTTC is increasingly being displaced by FTTP in areas where Openreach has completed its full fibre rollout. If FTTP is available at your address, it is generally the better choice at a comparable price.

FTTP (Full Fibre to the Premises)

FTTP runs glass fibre directly to your building, delivering speeds from 100Mbps to 1Gbps. Upload speeds are dramatically better than FTTC — important for cloud backups, video calls and hosted applications. Monthly cost: from £35-£80 depending on speed tier and provider.

For most small businesses, a 100-300Mbps FTTP product is a well-matched solution — fast enough for a team of up to 10-15 staff using cloud applications, available on a standard business SLA and priced competitively.

Leased Lines

A leased line is a dedicated, uncontended circuit with guaranteed symmetrical speeds and a formal SLA. For small businesses (under 10 staff) it is usually more than required and more expensive than necessary. From around £199/month. Appropriate when reliability is genuinely critical or VoIP call quality is paramount.

Business Phone Options After ISDN Switch-Off

Hosted VoIP

A hosted VoIP system (also known as a cloud PBX) delivers phone calls over your broadband connection via the internet. Features include voicemail, call queuing, multiple extensions, call recording and auto-attendant. Monthly cost: from £7-£20 per user depending on feature set and provider.

Hosted VoIP systems are well-suited to small businesses — there is no physical PBX hardware on-site, calls can be answered on a desk phone, laptop or mobile, and the system scales as the business grows.

Microsoft Teams Calling

For businesses already using Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams Calling (Teams Phone) adds PSTN calling capability to the Teams platform. Users make and receive calls from within Teams on any device. This can simplify management for businesses already running Teams — one platform for meetings, messaging and calls. Monthly cost: from £7-£15 per user as an add-on to existing Microsoft 365 licences.

Bundled Broadband and Phone

Several providers — including Virgin Media Business, BT Business and TalkTalk Business — offer bundled broadband and phone packages. These simplify billing but are not always the best-value approach when compared to best-available broadband plus a specialist VoIP system. Worth comparing the total cost before committing to a bundle.

Typical Small Business Costs

• Business FTTP 100Mbps: £40-£60/month
• Hosted VoIP (3 users): £21-£60/month
• Combined estimate for a small office: £60-£120/month depending on provider choices

Businesses currently paying more than this on legacy ISDN lines and FTTC broadband have typically been able to reduce their monthly communications spend while improving both broadband speed and phone functionality.