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BT's broadband speed claims were "misleading"

By Barry Collins

Posted on 25 Aug 2010 at 08:34

BT has been reprimanded by the advertising watchdog for exaggerating the benefits of its ADSL2+ broadband.

The complaints centered on BT's long-running advertising campaign, in which it showed a man and an estate agent struggling to load a webpage using conventional ADSL, while the man's partner sits at home loading pages instantly on an ADSL2+ connection.

The voice-over states that "BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband throughout the day, even at peak times".

We had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT's new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mbit/s service even at peak times

That statement was challenged by several viewers, who argued that a typical website wouldn't load any faster on a 20Mbits/sec connection than it would on an 8Mbits/sec. More viewers complained that pages wouldn't load as quickly as they appeared to in the advert.

BT provided a barrage of statistics to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to prove its 20Mbits/sec connections were faster than 8Mbits/sec lines, but admitted that the advertising sequence had been shortened and claimed that "it was merely a means of visualising a typical frustrating moment that viewers could relate to".

That wasn't good enough for the ASA, which claimed it "had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT's new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mbit/s service even at peak times". The ASA also ruled that the shortened sequences of web pages loading instantly were also likely to mislead.

Not faster than average

In a mammoth ASA ruling, in which six out of seven complaints against BT were upheld, the ads watchdog also slapped down BT for suggesting its broadband was faster than the industry average.

Rivals Sky and TalkTalk complained that the data those claims were based on was not independent and could have been unfairly weighted by cherry-picking the lines tested.

The ASA partially agreed, picking holes in the testing methodology used by Epitiro, which undertakes speed tests for BT and other ISPs. "While it had in fact been independently obtained, we were concerned that the data was potentially subject to inaccuracies based on line length," the ASA stated. "We noted Epitiro had not normalised for line length as part of their methodology."

As ADSL speeds are heavily influenced by line length, the ASA ruled that BT hadn't provided sufficient evidence that its broadband was faster than the industry average.

As ever, BT was told not to run the ads in their current form again. The company was also told to "ensure it held robust documentary evidence" to prove future claims about its broadband speed.

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User comments

My BT Advert

ADSL is up to 8Mbps
ADSL 2+ is up to 20Mbps

ADSL 2+ is faster than ADSL

Err, but you won't get anything like those speeds, is that OK?

Why not? It's complicated...

Tell you what; here's a nice story about a bloke and his pregnant girlfriend instead.

By Stiggy on 25 Aug 2010

An excellent summary

@stiggy, hit the nail on the head.

By milliganp on 25 Aug 2010

Oh no !

...she's pregnant ? When did that happen? After he got his Chinese from the High Street presumably.

By BAKERDAVE on 25 Aug 2010

Yep, she's pregnant

After 1.6 million people voted for that, apparently.

Question is, does this mean that 1.6 million people are responsible for the child?

That'll give the Child Support Agency a headache...

By greemble on 25 Aug 2010

hahahahaha

i think i can load pages that fast with my "VIrignMedia 50Mbps" connection. D, i also think they should ban all these 20mbps bulls**t, since on your computer you will never see it in bits, but in bytes and that is 8 times smaller values. so my 50mbps connection is only 6.2MBps although the fact is that those figures are equal, but when people see this they think wow this is so huge, but actually it is not.

By mobilegnet on 25 Aug 2010

Oh no !

...she's pregnant ? When did that happen? After he got his Chinese from the High Street presumably.

By BAKERDAVE on 25 Aug 2010

Oh no !

...she's pregnant ? When did that happen? After he got his Chinese from the High Street presumably.

By BAKERDAVE on 25 Aug 2010

I thought she already was pregnant

Why was she rubbing her tummy like that if she wasn't? Did the public have to vote for that? What was the other option - indigestion?!

By mviracca on 25 Aug 2010

Web Sites

Please test this stuff while downloading a File, and opening a Youtube movie.
i guess you need to wait much longer to load the yt movie compared to the 8mbit adsl

By fnord on 26 Aug 2010

Glad people are finally catching up to it

BT has consistently lied to me about speeds in my north-west london area.

When they were giving away 5MBps I got 2. When they were giving away 10 I got 4-5MBps and after a year 6MBps, but that could have been due to the 12MBps claims. Next step was their 20MBps promise but I never got close to 10MBps. Only on rare occasions did I get that (10,397Kbps), most times I get an average of 8,888KBps and this is what I mostly see when I check my router's homepage.

All I want from BT is for them to pay me back what they owe me in terms of bandwidth that they never supplied to me. Their adverts were deceptive and I was conned. When I pay for a pint of larger, that's what I expect or 99%. Anything less is theft, esp. at London prices.

Funny thing about that advert though, between 5.45pm and 6.45pm, my connection goes really slow even though the metre says 8MBps. Also once or twice whilst the advert ran on TV, my router had lost its internet connection. What a load of crap.

By Natasha26 on 26 Aug 2010

not really news

The only news here is that the ASA has finally done something about blatently misleading adverts over adsl speeds.

Connection "speeds" have never lived up to their advertised figures even at 14.4k, perhaps they should have to use their typical speed 1 mile from the exchange, independently verified at 3-4 fixed times in the day.

By mikeos on 26 Aug 2010

Download shmukload

You're all being misled by BT, check your upload speed. If you can't send out data packets from your own PC you won't get any in return. Ever noticed how though the download speed test results look good, those web pages still take ages to load. Download speeds can look great if you are merley sending 3 or 4 small packets of data. Check your upload speed. And by the way don't use the BT speed test, it only rates your lines ability, it does not carry out a measured performace test( data packets are sent to your PC but your PC don't send data packets back)

If you query BT helpline they will tell you that your download speed is within limits. They do not appear obliged nor wish to discuss upload speeds.

Talk about distracting people away from the real issue, huh.

By griffin on 26 Aug 2010

Time for reality to begin

BT advertises UP TO 8MBps where I live, but what do I receive? On a good time of day connection 0.4Mbps. Yes, you read that right 0.4. So, it is now the time for UP TO payments to be forced onto these digital thieves. We should only have to pay PRO RATA. Would you buy a high performance BMW and be happy to receive a second hand Ford Ka? No. So why can BT and other companies legally steal our money by blatant lying?

By einstein9 on 26 Aug 2010

Up to ....

I think the statement that BT is misleading you when it says "up to xxx" is not really complaint worthy. They are being quite specific in their offer.

If you went to a pub which offered "up to a pint of beer for xxx", don't be surprised when they offer you a teaspoon full of beer for the quoted price.

The problem with ADSL is that it is a variable technology and it should be priced as such. If you are unable to receive the published speeds (theoretical or otherwise) it should be priced accordingly.

By md_spencer on 26 Aug 2010