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BT in hot water with ASA
Thursday 9th October 2008, by Daniel King
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has reprimanded BT for its claim that it has the "best performing broadband".
Its claim was based on independent surveys conducted by Eptiro in January 2006 and January 2008.
However, Virgin Media appealed to the ASA, complaining that BT did not make it clear that the results only took into account ASDL connections.
Cable operators such as Virgin Media may have faster speeds, but this was not clarified in the advertisments.
Virgin's grievances were upheld by the ASA who did not accept BT's explanation of the advert.
BT claimed that it would have been too complicated for the advert to include the information about ASDL and cable connections, but the ASA disagreed.
A statement from the body said: "We considered that the headline claim 'We've been named Best Performing Broadband, again' did not make clear that the claim was specific to ADSL broadband.
"We concluded that, without immediate qualification, the ad was likely to mislead."
It noted that while some may not understand what ASDL was, many would at least understand that it was a form of broadband delivery.
The ASA did not uphold the complaint by Virgin that the advert does not make it clear that users must have a BT landline installed, saying that most consumers would understand that a phone line was required.
A study of broadband speeds offered by different providers throughout September found that Virgin Media offered the fastest download speeds at over 6Mbps.
BT was in seventh place with speeds less than 2.4Mbps, according to broadband.co.uk.
Categories: Broadband, BT, Virgin Media
