ASA frowns on misleading Internet access ads

ASA frowns on misleading Internet access ads

	Published : Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:45 By : Amy Watts Print this Story

LONDON - Broadband service providers in Britain are in trouble after the advertising watchdog in the country said that most of the high profile advertising done by these companies are often misleading.

Internet provider Bulldog is one of the first companies to feel the heat of Advertising Standards Authority after it's TV ad was banned, as the customers were not achieving the speed advertised by the company. In a rather high-profile advertising campaign, Bulldog had claimed that its users will be able to achieve speeds up to 8mb. However Advertising Standards Authority said that its customers were getting slower speed than advertised by Bulldog.

The £15.50 per month service was promoted with much fanfare with adverts placed in both national newspapers and television which claimed that: "With up to 8 meg broadband, more people can play, email, download and talk together, all at the same time". However a conditional text was added saying: "Broadband speed is up to 8 meg downstream. Subject to local availability and Bulldog phone line".

Rival service, NTL was clearly irked by the advert and complained to the Advertising Standards Authority with figures showing that only those who lived within 1.8 miles of an exchange were able to achieve the claimed speeds. Figures also showed that those who lived outside the 2.4-mile range from an exchange were able to get only 5mb speeds.

Bulldog defended the adverts saying that they had added the words "up to" and had not claimed that everyone will be able to attain 8mb speeds. However Advertising Standards Authority retorted saying that the phrase "up to" was all right as long as there will not be any noticeable difference in the quality. However speeds falling below 6mb were not acceptable.

The Advertising Standards Authority then released a statement adding that fro now on, the users will have to be told whether they will be able to achieve the quality claimed in the adverts. “We understood that users of any up to 8Mbps service could take advantage of capabilities such as video streaming, file sharing and online gaming but that there would be a noticeable degradation of quality of the service when speeds fell below 6Mbps. We therefore considered that 'up to' was not an adequate qualifier in ads for higher speed services. We concluded the ads were misleading,” the statement said.