The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has slapped both NTL and Telewest for their broadband cable modem service adverts. However, as predicted a few days back, NTL did manage to escape a complaint about its service not being 'unlimited':

It considered that because residential users enjoyed 24 hours a day, seven days a week broadband access and they were able to download 1Gb of data in a day without their access being halted and without being charged extra, the advertisers were justified in advertising that their fixed-monthly-fee broadband access offered unlimited Internet usage.

Sadly the ASA appears to have missed the point, although NTL didn't get off scot-free. ISP Freeserve complained that NTL was still advertising its 128Kbps service as 'broadband', which given a recent Oftel definition, should be narrowband:

The advertisers provided information to show that, when users of their 128 kbps service were included, they had more residential broadband customers than did other Internet Service Providers in the UK. They explained that they offered a range of broadband services at different speeds and prices: a bronze service at 128 kbps, a silver service at 600 kbps and a gold service at 1 Mbps.

The Authority acknowledged that all those services met Oftel's definition of broadband as "higher bandwidth always-on services, offering data rates of 128 kbps and above". Because, however, it considered that most consumers would understand broadband to mean a service with a speed of more than 500 kbps, the Authority concluded that the claim "the UK's No.1 Broadband Internet provider", without qualification, was likely to mislead.

The Authority told the advertisers to amend the advertisements to make clear that the claim was based on users of their 128 kbps service being included as broadband customers.

One interesting thing to note, the ASA doesn't appeared to be very up-to-date because the current Oftel definition is anything over 256Kbps.

Finally we come to Telewest, which escaped one of BTs complaints, only to have the next one upheld. BT had taken exception to Telewest inferring that its ADSL service was difficult to install:

The Authority considered the advertisers had implied that the installation of BT's broadband product was difficult, because it was not difficult to install, the Authority told them to ensure they did not repeat the implication that it was difficult to install in future advertising.