ASA UK Ban Ads for The One Broadband Over Misleading Performance Claim

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a direct mailing and circular advert for UK ISP The One Broadband (DSV Communications Ltd), which occurred after both were found to have misleadingly suggested that some of those who received the promotions currently only received “poor broadband connectivity” from their existing service, when that was not the case.

Both of the ads were addressed to “Dear Resident” and included claims such as “your current connection 30Mbps”, “your household has been identified as having poor broadband connectivity” and “caused by a poor broadband connection”, which the ASA considered would be understood by the recipients to be objective claims that would apply in relation to their own household and service provision.

The ASA also considered that they would understand the claims “The One fixes this. By connecting to The One, you will benefit from 100% fibre broadband and a state of the art WiFi 6 router. The result? 70x faster speeds and 5x better reliability” to mean that by switching to The One, any connectivity issues with their broadband would be solved and their broadband would be 70 times faster and five times more reliable.

However, two recipients of the ads promptly complained that they thought this was misleading, not least because both said they were already using the latest Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband network and had no issues with their current broadband connectivity. But the ISP said they were aiming to target those who they thought would still be on slower copper based lines (FTTC etc.).

ASA Ruling Ref: G25-1302034

We acknowledged that the ads emphasised connecting to full fibre and ad (a) stated that poor connectivity was “often by a reliance on the old copper network and having outdated WiFi routers” but we considered that this was not sufficient to override the impression that each ad had been sent to a particular household that had been identified as having a poor broadband connection that would be fixed by switching to The One. We noted that ad (b) did not contain the same reference to “the old copper network”.

Although households who were still using older technologies would benefit from performance improvements such as higher speeds and better reliability by changing to full fibre, because the ads had also been targeted to households who were already using full fibre broadband, and were not therefore experiencing the poor broadband connection and speeds of 30mbps stated in the ads, we concluded the claims in ads (a) and (b) which suggested consumers at specific location and household addresses were experiencing poor broadband connectivity were misleading.

The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.1 and (Misleading Advertising).

The ruling is likely to have an impact on other broadband ISPs that may try to personalise promotions in this way and then distribute them more generally. The ASA banned the ads in their current form and warned DSV/The One to “ensure that when targeting a neighbourhood to promote full-fibre services their future advertising did not misleadingly suggest consumers at a specific household or address had been identified as having poor broadband connectivity or speeds when that was not the case.”