BT rapped over more misleading broadband ads

BT has fallen foul of the ASA twice in August

BT has been rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over a series of adverts for its 20Mbit/s services, the second time in a month BT has been forced to withdraw some of its advertising.

The complaints centered on a claim by BT that its rollout of speeds of up to 20Mbit/s could give a "consistently faster broadband even at peak times", when compared to the firm's existing 8Mbit/s service.

Of the 17 complaints received, some argued that the claims made by BT were potentially misleading and questioned whether they could be substantiated, while others said a visual demonstration of the speeds in the TV advert was misleading.

Interestingly, of the complaints received by the ASA, three were from major internet service providers (ISPs) TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Sky.

Sky challenged that the claim by BT that its speeds would provide a consistently faster broadband even at peak times was misleading in the context of a comparison made with industry averages, because BT operates a traffic management policy.

Sky and TalkTalk argued the newspaper adverts were misleading because they did not make clear on-going restrictions on the availability of the 20Mbit/s service and that industry comparison figures were not suitable for fair use.

The ASA upheld these complaints, acknowledging that data BT had used for comparison was "not independently obtained and was not suitable for an industry-wide comparison".