Cityfibre Take Ads Watchdog to Court Over Fibre Broadband Promos

Fibre optic network builder Cityfibre has filed for a Judicial Review of last year’s decision by the UK Advertising Standards Authority, which ruled that it was “not materially misleading” for ISPs to describe slower hybrid fibre services (e.g. FTTC / HFC DOCSIS) as “fibre broadband.”

The debate over what should and should not be considered “fibre broadband” in advertising has been going on for a decade. The issue began in 2008 after the ASA allowed so called “hybrid fibre” or “part fibre” services (e.g. FTTC, G.fast or HFC DOCSIS networks that combine fibre with slower metallic copper or aluminium cables) to use the same wording as pure “full fibre” (FTTH/P) ISPs that take the optical fibre all the way to your home.

Pure fibre optic ISPs can deliver significantly faster speeds (i.e. they’re technically able to handle multi-Gigabit or even Terabit speeds) and are generally more reliable, while hybrid-fibre services tend to be slower and less reliable. Experiences do vary, depending upon the network setup and length of metallic cable, but generally there’s a big difference (Will the real fibre optic service please stand up?).

In the past this difference was less of a concern because the UK had precious little FTTH/P coverage but recently that has begun to change. Today Hyperoptic aims to cover 2 million urban premises with FTTH/P by 2022 (aspiration for 5m by 2025), while Vodafone with Cityfibre will reach 1m by 2021 (aspiration for up to 5m by 2025) and Virgin Media plan 2m by around 2019/20. Not to mention all of the work by smaller operators and Openreach’s own plan for 3m by 2020 (aspiration for 10m by c.2025). TalkTalk has also proposed a similar deployment.

As a result of that, as well as some political pressure from Government MPs, the ASA finally agreed to review its position and at the end of 2017 they concluded to recommend only minor changes (here). The ASA found that “fibre” was not one of the priorities identified by consumers when choosing a package; that consumers did not notice “fibre” claims in ads and that they saw it as a shorthand buzzword to describe modern fast broadband.

Overall consumers told the ASA that they did not believe they would change their previous decisions, even after the differences between those services and broadband services that use fibre optic cables all the way to the home were explained to them.

The outcome perhaps reflects the problem of trying to change an approach that has long since become established in the consumer subconscious, where the meaning of “fibre” has been diluted over years of use (or misuse) alongside slower hybrid (part) fibre technologies.

Nevertheless Cityfibre hasn’t given up. The operator’s lawyers will argue that the “research and logic that lead to the [ASA’s] decision was fundamentally flawed” and that it encourages slower hybrid fibre ISPs to “continue to mislead consumers.”

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“The time has come to do away with ‘fake fibre’. The ASA’s short-sighted decision to allow yesterday’s copper-based infrastructure to masquerade as the future-proof full fibre networks of tomorrow is a clear failure in its duty.

[The ASA] has failed to ensure honest and truthful broadband advertising, it has failed to enable consumers to make informed choices and it has failed to support a national infrastructure project critical to our success in a digital age.

UK operators such as CityFibre are busy building the gigabit capable networks that UK consumers and businesses will need for the future, but without clear and transparent advertising to guide their purchasing decisions, millions of consumers risk being conned into staying on inferior copper-based broadband services.

The first step to righting this consumer wrong is for the ASA to reverse its decision, which perpetuates the ‘fake fibre’ lie.”

Masses of new investment is pouring in to support the deployment of ultrafast full fibre networks. Indeed Cityfibre’s initial deployment with Vodafone alone will gobble around £500m, which means that there’s a lot of money on the table and thus an increasingly strong interest in levelling the playing field of advertising.

Ofcom notes that “full fibre” (FTTH/P) broadband services are currently only available to around 3% of UK premises, although they believe that recent changes in regulation (here) and all of the new investment could boost coverage to 20% by 2020. Suddenly the need to highlight that technological difference is becoming much more important, although admittedly the speed difference should already be obvious for consumers.

Meanwhile the ASA has promised to respond to Cityfibre’s filing “in due course” and we believe that this marks one of the few occasions where the watchdog’s approach has been challenged in the High Court. As a side note, ISPreview.co.uk ran a snap poll of 200+ respondents when the ASA announced their decision last year and 83% agreed that only FTTH/P ISPs should be able to use “fibre broadband” in advertising.

“As a result of the lax advertising rules, the rapidly increasing number of consumers with access to full fibre risk being unable to make an informed purchasing decision between these radically different technologies. ISPs could for example, advertise services over a copper-based network as ‘ultrafast fibre broadband’, misleading the consumer into believing they were purchasing the most advanced fibre service available to them,” said Cityfibre.

UPDATE 9:25am

Added Greg’s full comment above.

UPDATE 10:08am

Added a comment from rural FTTH ISP Gigaclear below.

Matthew Hare, CEO of Gigaclear, said:

“We fully support CityFibre’s challenge of the ASA’s ruling allowing the term ‘fibre’ to describe services delivered over copper networks. Without the knowledge of how full fibre differentiates from part fibre, consumers are being blinded to the fundamental capabilities of services on offer. With part fibre, the consumer is wholly reliant on the quality of the copper or other technology that is connecting them to the fibre backbone.

As CityFibre cites, the research we undertook in 2017 clearly showed that consumers typically felt it was misleading to describe part fibre networks as ‘fibre’ because it impedes their ability to differentiate between the different capabilities of different technologies. Yet no action has been taken by the ASA to rectify this.

As a nation, we lag far behind the majority of Europe in relation to full fibre. Currently, full fibre is only available to 1 million properties in the UK. The government has communicated the importance of full fibre networks for our economic future. Now the telecoms industry and the ASA needs to respond. It’s time to educate consumers in a clear and concise way, to ensure they have the knowledge to choose the service they want.”

UPDATE 12:11pm

Now Vodafone has joined to add their thoughts.

A Spokesperson for Vodafone UK said:

“Customers should absolutely get the service advertised and its description should be clear. That is why we have led the market with the introduction of guaranteed broadband speeds on our new Superfast packages and we were the first to abolish line rental. Fibre should mean fibre all the way to people’s homes and we look forward to offering customers exactly that later this year in partnership with CityFibre.”