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ASA - Virgin Media UK Escapes BTs Next Gen Broadband Advert Complaint

Posted: 08th Jul, 2009 By: MarkJ
The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has thrown out an interesting complaint by BT and a member of the public against a TV, national press and poster advert for Virgin Media's new up to 50Mbps broadband service. The adverts promoted 50Mbps as being the "fastest broadband" in the country, which BT claimed was untrue because of its 100Mbps FTTP trials in Ebbsfleet.

Likewise a member of the public pointed to a Wembley City service running at the same speed of up to 100Mbps. However the ASA noted that the Wembley City project had launched its service at the end of January 2009, which is after the Virgin Media advert had aired. The complaint was thus not upheld.

Similarly the ASA found that it was incorrect for BT to compare a limited availability pilot project in one area to a national service offered by Virgin Media and did not uphold the operators complaint either:

ASA Conclusion:
We noted that BT's 100Mb broadband was a pilot project and was neither widely available nor available to consumers outside the pilot project. We concluded that, because Virgin's broadband was the fastest generally available broadband in the UK at the time the ads were published, the claims "the fastest broadband in the UK" in ad (a) and "the fastest broadband in the land" in ad (c) were unlikely to mislead consumers.

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_46509.htm

There are of course other ISPs, such as Ask4, which offer 50Mbps products; not to mention business Ethernet leased lines and bonded ADSL2+ services. Though many of those are not consumer products and the others have limited availability. Presently Virgin Media is the only consumer operator to offer a truly national next gen style broadband service speed of 50Mbps.
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