UPDATE ASA UK Ban EE “Most Reliable Broadband” Claim After BT Moan

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a direct mailing advert for EE’s Home Broadband service after rival ISP BT complained that the promotions claim to offer “Britain’s most reliable broadband for staying connected” was misleading. But BT had less luck getting a promo for the ISPs BrightBox2 router taken down.

The promotion included small print at the bottom, which noted that EE’s “most reliable broadband” claim was based on Ofcom’s May 2013 fixed-line broadband report and in particular highlighted how “EE customers experienced less latency” (page 25) and “less jitter” (page 33) than its rivals, which the promotion said “means that EE is good for real time services such as Skype, video calling & gaming“.

However BT was quick to point out that the Ofcom report didn’t include a direct measurement of connectivity and that EE’s rating for latency and jitter “did not score higher than BT to a statistically significant degree“. On top of that BT complained that the promotion was not clear about whether its claims related to the fixed-line service itself or the ISPs wireless router performance. The ASA agreed on all counts.

ASA Ruling (REF: A14-259994)

We noted, however, that although each of the relevant graphs appeared to show that EE scored lower than their competitors [ISPr ED: lower = better when talking about latency and jitter], the report clearly stated that those differences were not statistically significant when compared to BT. Therefore, we considered that the report did not demonstrate that EE was superior to BT in relation to those measures.

We also noted that EE believed that customers would understand “broadband” to refer to the internet connection from the telephone network to the router. We noted that the footnote text stated “Based on Ofcom report on UK fixed-line broadband performance …”. However, we considered that that qualification was not prominent enough, and therefore most consumers would believe “broadband” referred to the internet connection from the telephone network to an internet enabled device, including the wireless connection transmitting the broadband connection from the router to the device. We noted that EE had not provided any evidence to demonstrate superior wireless router performance in relation to the maintenance of a connection.

Because we considered that consumers would understand the claim to relate to reliability of a broadband connection, including fixed-line and wireless router performance, and EE had not provided sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim, we concluded that it was misleading.

The ASA banned EE’s promotion, which is no longer being circulated anyway, and warned EE to ensure that they held “sufficient evidence to substantiate their claims in future“. However there is a hint of ‘pot calling the kettle black’ here because BT has also had adverts banned for a “most reliable” style claim in the past (here).

A separate complaint by BT against a website advert for EE’s Bright Box 2 fibre broadband router, which challenged EE’s claim that its “new Bright Box router is the first ‘plug and play’ Fibre Broadband Router in the UK“, was not upheld because at the time it was run BT’s competing / similar Home Hub 5 router had not yet enabled the self-install facility for its own subscribers.

UPDATE 22nd May 2014

The following is a response from EE.

An EE spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“The claims in our ad were based on a recent broadband report from Ofcom in which EE scored higher than other providers, including BT, on latency, packet loss and jitter, but not to a sufficient statistical degree. We accept the ASA’s ruling however and will amend the ad accordingly.”