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ASA: Virgin not the UK's fastest broadband

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 9 May 2012 at 11:32

The marketing spat between rival ISPs Virgin and BT has seen another advert banned, following a ruling that Virgin's claim to have “the fastest broadband in the UK” was misleading.

Less than a month after a Virgin Media complaint about an “unbeatable broadband” advert from BT was branded misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the ISP has won a tit-for-tat victory over a Virgin advert.

According to the ASA, BT challenged whether the claim of “the UK’s fastest broadband” was misleading and could be substantiated, and the complaint was upheld.

Virgin argued it had based the claim on official Ofcom figures, but the watchdog ruled that because Ofcom data doesn't include all ISPs - smaller, niche providers, for example - the claim could be seen as misleading.

There were localised instances of niche providers or other ISPs not included in Ofcom’s reports that provided faster download speeds than Virgin’s

“The ASA noted that a previous adjudication, published in July 2011, had found that, because there were localised instances of niche providers or other ISPs not included in Ofcom’s reports that provided faster download speeds than Virgin’s, the absolute claim 'the fastest broadband in the UK' was misleading,” the ASA said.

Virgin usually qualified the statement by saying the claim was made in relation to broadband services which were widely available to UK consumers, but the ASA said that “would contradict rather than clarify the claim”.

The ASA ordered Virgin not to run the advert again but also said it “told Virgin not to claim that its broadband was the fastest in the UK unless it held adequate comparative evidence to substantiate that was the case”.

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User comments

Virgin v bt

As a virgin, sky and bt broadband customer i have some sympathy with the ruling, for a single file download virgin is very good but for online gaming a 4 meg sky broadband beats virgin all day long

By stevenproc on 9 May 2012

Why not just claim...

...that they offer 'unlimited' speed? ASA has effectively rendered that term meaningless, but it will sound great on the marketing material.

And personally, I know that Virgin aren't the fastest connection per se, they're just the fastest that is widely available. Don't they get any credit for not pissing their/our money away on irritating adverts like BT?

By Noghar on 9 May 2012

Virgin V BT

As a Virgin, Sky and BT broadband customer i have some sympathy for the cable ruling, for downloading a single file the Virgin cable broadband is hard to beat but for online gaming the Sky 4 meg package will beat virgin all day long for low pings and latency

By stevenproc on 9 May 2012

Substitute for substance

If BT expended some of the energy it wastes complaining to the ASA on improving services and coverage it might win more customers than by complaining about Virgin's advertising.

By milliganp on 9 May 2012

Virgin has issues

I just ran Microsoft's office 365 broadband test on my home network (Virgin XL). The packet loss was too high to offer reliable Lync performance on a line spec'd at 30Mb/3Mb!

By milliganp on 9 May 2012

Virgin v bt

As a virgin, sky and bt broadband customer i have some sympathy with the ruling, for a single file download virgin is very good but for online gaming a 4 meg sky broadband beats virgin all day long

By stevenproc on 9 May 2012

Sorry about the double posts, i ve clicked refresh too many times

By stevenproc on 9 May 2012

Coverage claims are worse ...

Like this astonishing admission from Stewart's article in the current PC Pro:

"BT insists the excluded homes and businesses aren't included in the promise to supply two-thirds of UK premises with an FTTC service by 2015".

So "two-thirds of UK premises" is a straight forward lie - it is actually "two thirds of the premises that BT judge it to be economical to serve"!

Why is PC Pro not pressing BT hard on this but rather endorsing and repeating its ludicrous farce of "premises served by FTTP exchanges"? There is absolutely no reason I can see why BT should not publish the honest, meaningful figure of "premises enabled for FTTP". BT owns the cabinets and knows the number of connections to each cabinet so it knows the true number which I'll bet is nowhere near as impressive as the exchange picture. For example, they claim 100% of exchanges in Northern Ireland are already done. So what percentage of premises in NI are covered? Are they really claiming that ALL NI premises already "have FTTC service" in the definition of their 2015 promise? Really?

Come on PC Pro, lets have a real campaign on this. We want the proper figures, both in achievement reporting and in planning/promises. It is in the obvious interests of both BT and the government to exaggerate this, so lets create a stink and make sure they do not get away with this "newspeak".

By JohnAHind on 9 May 2012

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