EE UK Adverts Banned for “UNBEATABLE” No.1 Network Claims

A complaint by rival mobile operator Three UK has prompted the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to ban a string of adverts for EE’s 4G and 5G network, which were all found to have made “misleading” claims of being the United Kingdom’s “No.1 network“, as well as being “UNRIVALLED” and “UNBEATABLE.“

The adverts included a promotion in the national press (a), an outdoor poster (b), a website (c), a regional press ad (d), an Instagram post (e) and a paid-for Instagram post (f) for mobile network provider EE, seen in May, June, September 2019 and February 2020. However, Three UK challenged that these were all misleading with respect to the aforementioned claims, not least because a relevant measure was not used and the small print was either absent or insufficiently prominent.

In response, EE argued that many of their claims were based on the results of independent testing body Rootmetrics (example), which has indeed tended to place them above all of their primary Mobile Network Operator (MNO) rivals in the United Kingdom for the past 6 years “without challenge from any competitor” (Rootmetrics tests mobile broadband speed, call quality, network reliability etc.).

Despite this the ASA found that EE hadn’t always made sufficiently clear that their claims largely related to the studies from Rootmetrics. On top of that it noted how such studies didn’t take full account of “subjective consumer views of the service the mobile providers provided” (i.e. scientific network testing is only part of how you gauge the quality of a provider).

ASA Ruling (REF: G20-1057497 EE Ltd)

We considered that consumers would be unfamiliar with Rootmetrics and would therefore be unaware of how the Rootscore report tested operators. We noted the Rootmetrics logo in ads (a), (b), (d), (e) and (f), and further information in the footer of ads (a), (b) and (d) explaining that the claim was based on the rankings of the Rootscore report.

However, we did not consider the presence of the logo sufficient, nor was the further information sufficiently prominent to link Rootmetrics to the claims and allow consumers an understanding of the basis of those claims. In addition, neither the logo nor the further information was present at all in ad (c).

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While we noted EE’s reference to their Mobile Network of the Year award by Trusted Reviews, we understood that among the nominees were the three other mobile network operators and three virtual network operators that used those networks to deliver their own service. These aligned with the interpretation of the term “network” as meaning those businesses, rather than the meaning intended by EE, further underlining the ambiguity of the claim as it appeared in the ads.

While we recognised the Rootscore report rated EE as the best mobile network operator, using various objective measures of their infrastructural network performance, because consumers could understand the claims “UNBEATABLE”, “UNRIVALLED” and “No.1 Network” more broadly to relate to the network operator and to take account of both objective measures of network performance and subjective consumer views of the service the mobile providers provided, we considered that EE should have made clearer that the claims “No.1 Network”, “UNBEATABLE” and “UNRIVALLED” related specifically to the report.

As usual the ASA banned the adverts in their current form and told EE to ensure that their future advertising made the basis of their network performance claims sufficiently clear.