Virgin Media UK Mocks Cheeky BT Bristol FTTP Broadband Ad

Cable ISP Virgin Media UK has criticised BT’s “dubious, unsubstantiated advertising” of their “full fibre” broadband products in the city of Bristol, which via several large billboard promotions warned locals not to “settle for Virgin” and to instead get “more reliable speeds than Virgin M200 and M350” from their FTTP.

In response Virgin Media hired a van (or several vans) and drove them around the city (part of their #BornFast “stunt“), often leaving them parked in front of BT’s billboards. Each brightly lit van has “B*** ***T” brandished in big bold print on the side, which could also be seen as masked swearing for a particularly common phrase. Beneath that it said, “Our fastest average speed in Bristol is 516Mbps. That’s loads faster than BT. Enough said.”

Separately the cable operator said that their network covers almost 300,000 premises in the city and that they will be able to offer 1Gbps speeds by the end of 2021 as part of their DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade. Virgin said their aim is to ensure that “residents get the message in a fun and humorous way – all in the spirit of clarity and competition. The stunt is also being supported by content on Virgin Media’s social media channels with the potential to bring the billboards to other areas in future.”

Virgin Media added that they’ve also “formally challenged” BT’s advert (we assume this means they’ve complained to the Advertising Standards Authority) and has contacted the provider directly, although it won’t come as too much of a surprise to find that BT has “not yet responded with evidence to justify the claims made on their billboard” (they’re unlikely to respond to Virgin directly).

Cilesta Van Doorn, Brand and Marketing Director at Virgin Media, said:

“BT’s broadband bunkum just couldn’t go unchecked. Residents of Bristol won’t be fooled by BT’s babble and we look forward to welcoming anyone who wants to experience life in the fast lane with our superior ultrafast speeds. With a reliable future-proof network that is bringing gigabit speeds to Bristol and more of the UK, Virgin Media is, as always, leading the charge – catch us if you can.”

So what’s the truth in all this? Firstly, there’s no denying that Virgin Media currently offers the fastest download speeds (BT’s top tier offers average downloads of 300Mbps), although their 516Mbps average speed package only advertises 36Mbps for upload speed, while BT’s rival 300Mbps tier offers 49Mbps for upload.

BT’s network provider Openreach, much like Virgin, also has a 1Gbps consumer tier on the way (due to launch on 23rd March 2020) and that will offer uploads of 115Mbps while Virgin’s 1Gbps package comes with the same upload as on their 516Mbps plan. On the other hand we don’t yet know which Openreach based ISPs will offer the new 1Gbps tier and it may be more expensive than Virgin’s.

Coverage is another problem. At present Openreach’s FTTP network only covers about a third of premises in Bristol and rising, while Virgin Media’s network can already reach the vast majority of the city. As for reliability, gauging that tends to be more complicated and we’re not sure if either promotion has provided enough hard evidence to support a “more reliable” claim.. yet.

Overall BT would probably do well to ensure that their FTTP coverage is at least close to Virgin Media’s current level before trashing their rival. On top of that both sides really should consider upload performance in such promotions too.