Shared vs Dedicated Fiber: What the Contract Actually Guarantees
Two offers can both say "business fiber, 1 Gb/s" and commit to completely different things. The difference is not in the brochure headline; it is in five contract clauses. Here is how to read them.
Two Products Behind One Word
Shared fiber (FTTH, including FTTH Pro)
Your line joins a GPON tree shared by up to 64 subscribers. Advertised rates are maximums ("up to"), upload is a fraction of download, and repair times are targets, not commitments. Priced accordingly.
Dedicated fiber (FTTO, FTTE)
A point-to-point fiber reserved for your site, engineered and monitored individually. Throughput is guaranteed and symmetric, repair time is contractual (GTR), and the SLA carries penalties.
The Five Clauses That Matter
| Contract clause | Shared (FTTH) | Dedicated (FTTO) |
|---|---|---|
| Throughput wording | "Up to X Gb/s": a ceiling, not a floor. No minimum committed rate. | "Guaranteed X": a committed rate, measurable and enforceable, contention 1:1. |
| Symmetry | Asymmetric by design; upload typically a fraction of download. | Symmetric: same committed rate both directions. |
| Repair time | Indicative target, often business hours, sometimes sold as a paid option. | GTR: contractual maximum (4h at Virtuasys), 24/7, with penalties. |
| Availability SLA | Rarely quantified; when quantified, without penalties. | Quantified (99.9% to 99.99%) with service credits written in. |
| Supervision | You detect the outage and open the ticket. | Per-circuit monitoring by the operator's NOC; the operator often calls you first. |
GTR: the Clause That Sorts the Market
GTR (Garantie de Temps de Rétablissement) is the maximum contractual time to restore service. Two reading tips. First, check the coverage window: a 4h GTR limited to business hours is a different product from 4h 24/7. Second, check the penalty mechanism: a GTR without automatic service credits is a stated intention.
Also check who owns the repair. When your provider resells another operator's access, the GTR you signed is bounded by an escalation chain you cannot see. Asking "who operates the network, end to end?" is a legitimate pre-sales question. Any operator should answer it in one sentence.
Questions to Put in Any RFQ
- What is the committed (not maximum) rate, in both directions?
- What is the contention ratio on my access segment?
- What GTR applies, over which hours, with which penalties?
- Is the SLA quantified, and are credits automatic or on claim?
- Who operates the access and the backbone? Which AS number carries my traffic?
- Is a BGP session possible on this access, and is it priced or included?
Match the Contract to the Stakes
Shared fiber is the right product when an outage is an inconvenience. When an outage stops production, telephony or payments, the contract needs committed rates and a GTR with teeth. That product is dedicated fiber: see enterprise fiber (FTTO) for the specifications, and FTTO vs FTTH for the architecture behind the difference.
Contract Comparison FAQ
For offices whose activity survives an unplanned day offline, often yes. For sites running telephony, production or payment systems, the absence of committed rates and contractual repair times is the real cost of the cheaper line.
Your committed rate is provisioned for you alone on the access segment. On shared trees the ratio can reach 1:64, meaning the advertised rate assumes your neighbors are idle.
Because a physical fiber pair is engineered to your address, sometimes with civil works. That construction is precisely what makes guaranteed rates and a 4h GTR possible afterwards.
Get a Dedicated Fiber Quote With the Guarantees in Writing
Committed symmetric rates, GTR 4h, SLA with penalties, BGP session included. Check eligibility, then compare our contract to what you have.