A complaint raised by broadband ISP and mobile giant BT looks set to result in the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banning a TV and poster advert for Sky Mobile (Sky Broadband), which was found to have “misleadingly” claimed to have offered “the perfect network“.
The complaint related to two Sky Mobile adverts – seen in November 2021 – for the iPhone 13, which both adopted text to highlight “the perfect iPhone 13 on the perfect network“. In its defence, Sky said they “did not intend the claim ‘the perfect network’ to be an objective or superiority claim about network capabilities or performance“, but the ASA didn’t buy it.
The outcome does not come as much of a surprise. Historically, many broadband ISPs and mobile operators have tried to claim they are the “best“, “most reliable” or something to that effect, only to neglect the need for an effective comparison. Overly broad claims about service performance or quality rarely hold up to scrutiny when put before the ASA.
ASA Ruling REF: A21-1137839
“Because the ads claimed that Sky Mobile was “the perfect network” and not “a perfect network”, we considered that consumers would understand the claim to mean that Sky Mobile was the only network which could be described as “perfect”. We therefore considered that the claim was also a comparative claim that meant not only that Sky Mobile performed to a very high standard across a broad range of elements of their network, but that they performed better than all other mobile network providers, and that they had objective evidence to support that.
The CAP and BCAP Codes required that comparisons with identifiable competitors must objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative features of those products. As such, we expected to see evidence that a range of networks had been evaluated based on a robustly-conducted comparison of the same elements of their service and that Sky Mobile had received the highest score of all the rated networks.
Sky had explained that they considered the claim was subjective and based on their own opinion of their network. On that basis, Sky did not provide objective evidence. Therefore, we concluded that the claim had not been substantiated and was likely to mislead.”
As usual, the ASA banned Sky’s advert in its current form and told the operator to ensure that, in the future, such language was supported by objective comparative evidence to substantiate the claim. The ASA has yet to make this ruling public on their website, but it is expected to go live in the near future.
Sky use O2’s networks. Definitely not the perfect network!
Love it when the ASA bans an advert! 8 months after it’s had it’s run!
Like all “independent” so-called customer “protection” bodies, they’re useless.
OfGem: “Its primary duty is to protect the interests of consumers, where possible by promoting competition”
OfCom: “has wide-ranging powers across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors”
Waste of money, time and effort.
It’s hard to call the ASA a true regulator as they’re quite toothless and, even in cases of successive abuse, have rarely ever used their legal backstop powers to help draw a line in the sand.
By comparison, Ofcom does a massive amount of work and a lot of their changes have been broadly positive for consumers and the industry, even though they don’t always get it right. But we’re better off with Ofcom than without it. One way or another, you’d still need a regulator for this sector.
> Overly broad claims about service performance or quality rarely hold up to scrutiny when put before the ASA.
Yet they are happy with VM calling their coax network fibre.
“Yet they are happy with VM calling their coax network fibre.”
Very true. An ASA which doesn’t even know what fibre broadband means is pretty useless.
When will they also ban the current radio advert for BT broadband? Because they claim in the advert ‘BT Broadband backed up by EE, the UK’s ‘best’ network’… seems to me that’s open to a complaint.