BT forced to change Infinity ad after Virgin Media complaints

BT has been forced to change part of the advertising campaign for its Infinity broadband product after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld two complaints by fierce rival Virgin Media.

One complaint centred around wording in a BT Infinity advert that said: 'Most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds.' Virgin argued that this erroneously implies that most customers had the service.

A second complaint about the same advert argued that it was not clear enough that the Infinity service has limited availability.

A third complaint focused on the wording of another advert which stated that customers unable to get the Infinity service can still get a 20Mbit/s package before being upgraded to Infinity, which Virgin said implied the availability of other fibre products.

The ASA ruling upheld the first and second complaints, but rejected the third. Despite this, BT welcomed the decision and said that it will adhere to the ASA ruling.

"We understand that the ruling clarifies that the ASA wants the fact that BT Infinity is rapidly rolling out, but not yet 'widely available', to be made clearer in the body copy of press ads," BT said.

"While we accept this point, we see this as a minor point of clarification, particularly when compared with recent broadband claims upheld against Virgin."

As well as this reference to Virgin's own troubles with the ASA, BT also attacked its rival's network coverage, as the firms show no signs of backing down in the war of words over their broadband products.

"We'll seek to clarify with the ASA how they define 'widely available', given the restricted availability of Virgin Media's own fibre broadband compared to BT's broadband network," the statement continued.

"BT has publicly stated that it plans to pass two thirds of homes with fibre-based superfast broadband by 2015, which will surpass Virgin's current network availability."

V3 contacted Virgin Media for a response to the ASA ruling, but the firm declined to comment.

Virgin and BT have fallen foul of the ASA on previous occasions as the companies battle for supremacy in the broadband market.