Cityfibre Attack Coppersaurus of Misleading Fibre Broadband Ads

Fibre optic network builder Cityfibre has today launched the Coppersaurus campaign, which aims to draw attention to the UK’s “prehistoric broadband” and support their court case to end “misleading” uses of “fibre” terminology in ISP adverts (i.e. when it’s used to describe slower hybrid copper and fibre connections).

As part of all this Cityfibre recently commissioned another Censuswide survey of almost 3,500 UK residents, which found that 78% of UK consumers feel “slowed down and frustrated” by their internet connection (rising to 82% among homeworkers, 87% for young people and falling to 71% for those aged 55+). Meanwhile 56% said their current connection also prevents them from working from home as much as they would like.

Meanwhile two thirds of respondents said they thought broadband advertising rules should be changed, albeit only once they understood the difference between copper-based (e.g. FTTC / VDSL2) and true Gigabit capable “full fibre” broadband services like Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP).

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“For too long the UK has been held back by a deliberate lack of investment by BT Openreach in fibre infrastructure. Although companies like CityFibre are building the networks that will give millions of homes and businesses access to full fibre broadband, providers continuing to advertise copper-based connections as “fibre” is leaving people completely confused about what is on offer.

With the way we work increasingly blending our home and work lives, it has never been more important for people to understand what broadband connection they really get at home. Years of misleading advertising have made this near impossible, which is why the rules must be changed now – this cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. It is time everyone knows the reality of what’s under our streets.”

The argument centres around the fact that pure fibre optic ISPs (e.g. FTTP/H), which run the optical fibre cable all the way to your doorstep, can generally deliver significantly faster speeds (i.e. they can handle 1000Mbps or faster) and are more reliable. Meanwhile hybrid fibre (part fibre) services, like Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC), use a mix of metallic and optical fibre cables, which tends to make them both a lot slower and less reliable.

We should caveat this by saying that Virgin Media’s Hybrid Fibre Coax (DOCSIS) based cable network uses a fairly capable Coaxial copper setup, which is one of the reasons why they’re able to produce much faster and more stable speeds than Openreach’s FTTC network (uses twister pair copper and the lines can be significantly longer = more signal degradation). Virgin’s future DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade will eventually result in Gigabit packages, albeit only on the download side.

In the past, when FTTP/H providers and networks were in the extreme minority, this debate didn’t really matter as much. All this has begun to change over the past couple of years, with a series of big regulatory changes, tax breaks (business rates holiday etc.) and new investment programmes being launched to foster the growth of “full fibre” networks.

Last week also saw Ofcom and the Government outline their plans for ensuring that every home and business in the UK can access a Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) style “full fibre” broadband ISP network by 2033 (here and here).

Suffice to say that related ISPs and builders, like Cityfibre, have now stepped up their calls for the current advertising rules to be changed (allows both FTTH/P and FTTC services to use “fibre” terminology in their adverts). Cityfibre recently secured a Judicial Review on the subject, which hopes to force the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) into taking a second look at the matter after initially shunning it (here and here).

As it stands there’s a good chance that Cityfibre will secure another review of the current guidelines, although that doesn’t mean to say that the ASA will dramatically change their approach in favour of only allowing FTTH/P ISPs to use “fibre” terminology. Equally it will be difficult to unpick something that has long since become established in the consumer subconscious, where the meaning of “fibre” has been diluted over years of use (or misuse).

May I have your attention please.. will the real fibre optic service please stand up?