ASA torpedoes Virgin broadband ads

 

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Posted on 15 Oct 2008 at 17:06

Virgin Media has found itself on the wrong side of the Advertising Standards Agency again, after claiming to provide the "UK's fastest broadband".

The broadband provider was the subject of two adjudications, the first of which was brought by two members of the public who took issue with the following ad: "So it's faster. In fact, it's the fastest broadband you can get. Right now we're offering you speeds of up to 20Mb..."

The complaints queried the veracity of this claim, given that other ADSL2+ services offer up to 24Mb/sec lines.

British Sky Broadcasting (BSB) was also unhappy with the ad, as the speed data on which it was based was collated by ISP benchmarking company Epitiro, which only monitors ISPs that subscribe to its service - something Sky hadn't done.

Ignoring the headlines

Virgin responded that the claim was based on throughput speeds, rather than the infamous headline speeds rarely achieved by customers. It also argued that while Epitiro didn't cover Sky, the service still monitored "90% of UK ISPs", more than enough for a representative sample of the industry.

The ASA remained unswayed. The watchdog argued the ads had overstepped the mark by implying it wasn't possible to achieve faster downloads on any other service, despite it being theoretically possible to do so on a 24Mb/sec line. It also found that because Epitiro data did not cover the whole industry it could not be used to backup such sweeping claims.

Fibre never slows down?

Virgin was also pulled up short over its campaign to eulogise the benefits of its fibre-optic cable network over ADSL broadband.

Once again, it was Sky which made the complaint, arguing the campaign "misleadingly implied ADSL services were always slow as a result of the copper wiring" and that "Virgin Media's cable broadband service never slowed down."

The ASA accepted both complaints noting that the claim "our broadband travels through fibre optic cable, unlike all other providers, whose copper wire broadband trickles down telephone lines", was misleading because ADSL broadband was not always slow, but became slower the further it travelled.

The watchdog also took issue with the idea that cable never slowed down, noting that while it was possible for all customers to achieve 20Mb/sec download speeds, in reality the average was around half that.

Virgin Media is becoming something of a serial offender when it comes to broadband ads, having now had ten complaints upheld against it in the past 18 months.

Author: Stuart Turton