Office Broadband in a Cardiff Serviced Office: What You Get
Included broadband in a serviced office means a fibre-optic circuit into the building, shared across the businesses inside it, handed to your office over wifi and usually a wired socket, with the cost sitting inside your monthly fee. At Alexandra Gate the connection is high-speed fibre-optic and ready for instant setup, and the options run from shared access up to 500 Mbps dedicated lines. Which of those two you want is the real question, and most teams settle it in about five minutes once somebody explains the difference in plain terms.
Mixing these up causes nearly every connectivity argument in a shared building
Ask which layer a problem sits in before you ask whose fault it is. It saves an afternoon.
Connectivity is the first technical thing an established team asks about on a viewing, and it deserves more than one bullet point on a facilities list. This page sets out what the phrase covers, which number actually matters, what sharing a circuit does to a working day, how to tell whether you belong on shared access or a dedicated line, and the questions worth putting to any operator before you sign anything.
Key takeaways
- Included broadband means the building’s fibre circuit, shared, delivered into your office. It is not a private line unless you pay for one.
- Options here run from shared access up to 500 Mbps dedicated lines, and the fibre is ready for instant setup rather than waiting on a new install.
- Upload speed decides whether video calls and cloud backups behave. Download is the figure operators advertise and the one that matters least to most offices.
- Contention explains why a connection feels different at 10am and at 3pm. Ask how a building manages it, not only what the headline number says.
- Most small teams do not need a dedicated line, and we will tell you so.
- A wired socket at the desk beats wifi for anyone on client calls all day, and it costs nothing to ask for one.
- Ask who you ring at 9am on a Tuesday when nothing loads. That answer tells you more than any speed test.
Every office in our building comes with fibre already live, so a team can plug in and work the morning it moves. Our serviced offices in Cardiff with fibre ready to go run from 80 to 1,200 sq ft for teams of 2 to 30, with connectivity, telephony, cleaning, parking and 24/7 fob access inside one monthly figure. Ring 029 2089 4700 and we will talk through which connection option suits the way your team actually works.
What sits inside the licence fee
Broadband access, the building’s wifi, the maintenance of the circuit and the cost of the carrier contract sit inside the monthly figure here, alongside furnished offices with IT and telecoms provision, professional telephony with phone and number provision, daily cleaning, free on-site parking and 24/7 secure access. What sits outside is anything you order for yourself: a dedicated circuit, your own firewall, extra structured cabling, a static IP block where a carrier charges for one.
Fee structures vary enormously between operators, and connectivity is one of the easiest things to move from the inclusive column to the extras column without anyone noticing. Our guide to what an all-inclusive office fee should cover sets out how to read a quote line by line so two offers can be compared honestly.
Business grade or consumer grade, and who owns the router
Business grade is not marketing language. It describes a service with a support contract behind it, a defined target for fixing faults, and usually a lower level of sharing on the network than a residential product carries. Consumer grade is the same underlying fibre with a cheaper, slower promise attached to the repair.
Ask who owns the router and who administers the network. In a serviced building the answer for the shared service is the operator, working with the carrier, and that is the right answer because it means faults are somebody’s job rather than yours. Where you run your own kit inside the office, that boundary should be written down: their responsibility ends at the socket, yours begins at your firewall.
Download, upload, and which number actually matters
Upload is the number to ask about. Download decides how fast a file arrives and how quickly a page paints, and modern fibre gives almost every office more download than it can use. Upload decides whether your face freezes on a client call, whether a 4 GB drawing set reaches the cloud before lunch, and whether the overnight backup finished.
Download several times larger than upload. Fine for browsing and email. The reason your call freezes while somebody backs up.
The same figure in both directions. That single distinction explains most of the price gap between the two.
Why upload carries the working day
A video call sends as well as receives. Microsoft publishes bandwidth guidance for Teams, and Zoom publishes its own, and both put a group HD call in the low single digits of megabits per second in each direction per participant. That sounds trivial until eight people in one office are each on a different call, all sending video at once, while a cloud backup runs in the background and somebody uploads a project archive.
Downloads were never their problem. Their problem was that every revised model went back to a cloud host at the end of the day, three gigabytes at a time, and on a connection with a small upload figure that job ran until nine at night and blocked everyone else’s calls while it did. Their fix was not a faster download package. It was a symmetric circuit.
Where the speed was measured
A speed test at the desk and a speed test at the router tell you different things. The router figure describes what the building is receiving. The desk figure describes what you will get after wifi, distance, walls and every other device have taken their share, and it is the only figure that reflects your working day.
Run your own test on a viewing, on your own laptop, standing where your team will actually sit. Do it twice: once first thing and once mid-afternoon.
Ask the operator when their own figures were last measured and at which point in the network. Any building at Ffordd Pengam in CF24 2SA, or anywhere else, should be relaxed about a buyer opening a speed test in the room.
Contention: what sharing a circuit does to a working day
Contention is the number of users sharing the same capacity, and it is why a connection that tested beautifully on a Thursday morning viewing feels sluggish at eleven on a Monday. The contention ratio is the traditional way of expressing it, written as something like 20:1 or 50:1, describing how many subscribers could in theory draw on the same slice of capacity at once.
The ratio matters far less than what happens when everyone shows up. Capacity is rarely used evenly. Offices are quiet at eight, busy at ten, busy again at two, and a building with plenty of headroom at peak will feel faster than a building with a bigger headline number and no headroom at all.
How a well run building manages sharing
Two mechanisms do the work. The first is segmentation: putting each tenant on its own VLAN so that your traffic and your neighbour’s traffic are logically separate, which helps security more than speed but stops one badly behaved device flooding the network for everybody. The second is quality of service, which prioritises latency-sensitive traffic such as voice and video over traffic that can wait, such as a software update or a backup.
Ask three questions and you will learn more than any specification sheet gives you. Has the building been tested at full occupancy rather than at eight in the morning. Is bandwidth capped per office, or does everyone draw freely from the same pool. Does any tenant hold priority traffic, and on what basis. An operator who has thought about the network will answer all three without hesitating.
What to do about a video-heavy day
Several teams on calls at once is the peak load in almost every serviced building, and it is the scenario worth planning for rather than hoping about. Three practical moves reduce the pain. Put the people who are on calls all day onto wired connections, which removes them from the wifi contest entirely. Move large transfers and backups to a schedule that runs overnight rather than at two in the afternoon. Book a room for the calls that genuinely cannot wobble, because a client presentation or a board update deserves a wired socket and a closed door rather than a hot desk and optimism.
Shared access or a dedicated line: which side are you on
Shared access is right for most teams, and we say that even though the dedicated option is the more expensive one. A business whose day is email, accounting software, a CRM in a browser, calls on Teams and a modest amount of file sharing will not notice the difference, and paying for a private circuit would be paying for headroom nobody uses.
Three favour a dedicated circuit. Three favour shared access. Two depend entirely on your business.
Scroll the table → hover any row to focus it
| Dedicated line | Shared access | |
|---|---|---|
| CapacityDedicated | Yours regardless of what the rest of the building is doing | Drawn from a pool everyone shares |
| SymmetryDedicated | Same figure up and down, so uploads stop being the bottleneck | Usually asymmetric, with upload the smaller number |
| Service levelDedicated | A contractual target with the carrier for repair | A business-grade support contract held by the operator |
| Cost positionShared | Priced separately, because capacity is reserved for one business | Inside the monthly fee, nothing extra to budget |
| Time to workingShared | Weeks, because a new circuit has to be installed | Live already, ready for instant setup on move-in day |
| Who fixes itShared | You and your carrier hold the relationship | The operator raises and chases it, because the contract is theirs |
| Behaviour at peakDepends | Your worst hour looks like your best hour | Depends on the building’s headroom, not on the headline number |
| Who it suitsDepends | Design studios, video producers, hosted systems, live client services | Email, accounting software, a CRM in a browser, modest file sharing |
The test that decides it
- Do you move large files up as well as down every day, as a design studio, a video producer, an architecture practice or a firm running its own hosted systems does?
- Does a slow hour cost you real money, as it does for a trading desk, a busy contact operation or anyone running live services for clients?
- Does a client contract, an insurer or a certification body require a stated level of connectivity or a documented network boundary?
Two yeses out of three and you should be pricing a dedicated circuit. Fewer than two, and shared access will carry you.
The 500 Mbps dedicated option here exists for that second group. It is not a faster version of the shared service, it is a different arrangement: capacity reserved for one business, unaffected by the rest of the building. Teams taking one of our larger offices for growing Cardiff teams are the most common candidates, though a five-person data business can want one just as badly as a twenty-person one.
They handle client accounts, run everything through a cloud accounting platform, and their heaviest transfer of the month is a PDF pack. Shared access carries them without a hiccup, and the money they would have spent on a private circuit went into a second office when they hired.
Bringing your own provider or ordering a separate circuit
You can, and tenants do. A business that wants a leased line, a second carrier for resilience or a specific provider its group already contracts with should say so before signing, because the practical steps take time and involve the building as well as you.
What to agree before you order
Get four things settled in writing. Who pays for making good any building work the install requires. What happens to the circuit and its cabling when you leave, since fibre installed for you does not become yours to remove. Whether the centre charges for the use of risers or comms room space. And who holds the support relationship when the circuit fails, which with your own line will be you and your carrier rather than the building.
Wifi, wired sockets and the network inside your office
Wifi standards move quickly, and the current generation in wide business use is Wi-Fi 6, which is designed for dense environments where many devices compete for the same air rather than for raw headline speed. That matters far more in a shared building than in a house. Ask which standard is running, how many access points serve your floor, and where the nearest one to your office actually sits.
SSIDs, VLANs and the point of separation
An SSID is the network name your laptop sees. A VLAN is the logical separation underneath it. Some buildings give every tenant its own SSID and VLAN, some run a single tenant network with a shared SSID, and some run both alongside a guest network. Separation is worth asking about because it decides whether a neighbour’s laptop can see your network printer or your file share.
Anyone handling sensitive data should not rely on building wifi separation alone. Run your own router or firewall inside your office, put your devices behind it, and treat the building network as an internet connection rather than as your network. That is the arrangement most IT providers will recommend, and it costs very little.
Wired against wireless at the desk
Wired wins for anything that matters. Lower latency, no interference, no drop when somebody microwaves lunch, and it takes a device out of competition for the wifi. Desktops, desk phones, printers and anyone who lives on video calls should be on a cable. Wifi is for laptops that move, phones, tablets and visitors.
Check on a viewing how many network sockets each office has and where they are, because it is easier to add cabling before you move furniture in than after. Ask whether patching to a specific socket is included or chargeable.
Guest wifi for visitors
Visitors should never join the network your business runs on. A separate guest SSID, on its own VLAN, with internet access and nothing else, is the standard arrangement and the one to insist on. Access is normally issued as a code or a voucher at reception, which is staffed Monday to Friday, typically 8:30am to 4:45pm, so a client arriving for a 10am meeting is online before they sit down.
Two questions are worth asking. Is the guest network genuinely separated from tenant traffic, or is it the same network with a different password. And does guest access expire, because a code that has been the same since 2019 is not a guest network, it is a public one.
Regulated data, client confidentiality and what to insist on
Businesses holding client-confidential or regulated data should treat the building connection as untrusted and build their own controls on top of it. That is not a criticism of any operator, it is simply how a competent information security posture works in shared premises.
Cyber Essentials, the UK government-backed scheme overseen by the National Cyber Security Centre, asks for firewalls at your internet boundary, secure configuration, access control, malware protection and up-to-date software. Every one of those controls is yours to hold rather than the building’s, and every one of them is achievable on shared building broadband, which is worth knowing before somebody talks you into a circuit you do not need. ISO 27001 goes further and asks you to document the whole management system, including your physical and network boundaries in a shared building, so an auditor will want to see where your responsibility starts and ends.
What to insist on is short. Your own firewall. Your own VLAN or your own physical separation. Written confirmation of who can access the comms room and your office. A named contact for faults. And clarity on whether the operator will support an audit question in writing when your certification body asks one.
What to ask any operator about connectivity on a viewing
Buyers compare Cardiff centres on this exact point, and the buildings that publish real detail win the comparison. Take this list to every viewing you do, ours included.
- What is the download and the upload speed, where was it measured, and when.
- How many businesses share the circuit, and has it been tested at full occupancy.
- Is there a dedicated or leased line option, and what does it change.
- Is my office on its own VLAN, and is there a separate guest network.
- What wifi standard is running, and where is the nearest access point to my office.
- Is there a backup connection, and what happens during a carrier outage.
- Who do I ring when it drops, in hours and out of hours, and what is the escalation route to the carrier.
- Can I run my own firewall, and can I order my own circuit.
The last one on that list is the one people forget to ask and the one they need most in month three. Our viewing checklist for a Cardiff serviced office covers the rest of the building on the same principle.
When it drops, who do you ring
Here it is reception on 029 2089 4700, or info@alexandragate.co.uk, and Kay Brook as Centre Manager during staffed hours. Because we are independent and owner managed, that call reaches somebody who can walk to the comms room rather than somebody logging a ticket for a regional team.
“Professional, friendly and helpful building management team.”Google review, Alexandra Gate Business Centre
Connectivity questions are ultimately support questions. The specification tells you what the circuit can carry; the people tell you what happens at nine on a Tuesday when it does not.
Outages happen to every network, including the best ones, so the useful question is not whether a building has ever lost connectivity. It is what happened next and how long it took. Ofcom’s Connected Nations reporting tracks how far full fibre has spread across Wales, and coverage has moved a long way, but no circuit anywhere is immune to a digger through a duct. Businesses that genuinely cannot lose an hour should hold their own backup, and a 4G or 5G failover router in your own office is an inexpensive answer under your own control.
Three ways to take it
Frequently asked questions
Is broadband included in the office fee at Alexandra Gate?
Yes. High-speed fibre-optic broadband is part of the offices here and is ready for instant setup, so a team can work the day it moves in rather than waiting on an install. Options run from shared access up to 500 Mbps dedicated lines, and the dedicated arrangement is priced separately because it reserves capacity for one business.
What is a contention ratio, and should I worry about it?
It describes how many users could draw on the same capacity at once, written as a ratio such as 20:1. Worry less about the number and more about how the building behaves at its busiest hour, because a circuit with real headroom at peak beats a better-looking ratio every time. Ask when the connection was last tested at full occupancy.
Can I install my own leased line into a serviced office?
Yes, in most buildings including this one, though it is a project rather than a phone call. You order the circuit with your chosen carrier, the building owner signs the wayleave that allows the network operator to install through the property, and the centre agrees the entry point, the route through the risers and the access arrangements for the engineer. Lead times run to weeks, so keep the shared connection live until the new circuit is tested and working, and settle in writing who pays for making good and what happens to the cabling when you leave.
Is wifi good enough for Microsoft Teams calls all day?
For most people, yes, on a well designed network with enough access points. For anyone whose job is back-to-back client calls, plug into a cable and stop thinking about it, because wired removes latency, interference and competition from other devices in one move. Cabling a desk costs almost nothing compared with one lost client call.
Do I need a dedicated line to meet Cyber Essentials or ISO 27001?
No. Neither scheme requires a private circuit. Cyber Essentials focuses on your firewall, secure configuration, access control, malware protection and patching, and all five sit inside your own office rather than in the building’s network. ISO 27001 asks you to document your boundaries in a shared building, which means being able to describe where the operator’s responsibility ends and yours begins. A dedicated line makes that description simpler and is often worth having for other reasons, but it is not a requirement of either.
Four more things a viewing should settle
Fibre that is already live when you collect the fob
Connectivity is one of the few things in an office move you cannot fix at the weekend. Ordering a new circuit into an empty unit takes weeks, sometimes months, and every one of those weeks is a week your team works around a problem instead of working.
Bring a laptop and run your own speed test in the room
We would rather you did. Alexandra Gate Business Centre has run as an independent, owner-managed centre at 2 Alexandra Gate since 2005. The fibre is in, the offices are furnished with IT and telecoms provision, the car park outside is free for staff and visitors, and the fob gives you 24/7 access to a building that is monitored around the clock. Two miles from the city centre, straight onto the A48(M) and the M4, with a cafe downstairs when the call ends badly.
Ring 029 2089 4700 to talk through shared access against a dedicated line for the way your team works.
