The UK's independent regulator for marketing, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), has long been a battle ground for the UK's biggest broadband provider. Most recently, it's been the turn of our biggest fibre provider, Virgin Media, to get a kicking or, more accurately, a gentle slap on the wrist from the ASA for their 'stop the broadband con' campaign.
The campaign, launched in November last year, was cheeky and attention-grabbing: having had numerous run-ins with the ASA in the past it seems unlikely that Virgin didn't foresee this ban. The regulator upheld eight complaints about the series, largely claims surrounding exaggeration and denigration of other businesses, but it largely left the 'up to' issue itself which was the whole point of the ads.
It's interesting, if slightly mind-mangling, to see an advertising body adjudicate on a complaint about advertising and it opens up an old debate: should UK providers be using 'up to' to advertise broadband speeds?
Background: the campaign
At the end of last year, Ofcom released the results of a large scale UK broadband speed test. The figures must have made the good people at Virgin very happy. They showed that the FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) provider's three broadband deals were delivering 90-96% of the 'up to' speed as a whole day average. The whole day average for 'up to' 20Mb and 24Mb ADSL packages showed that they delivered 29% of the advertised speeds.
It was largely on the back of those results, then, that Virgin launched an online campaign called 'stop the broadband con'. The campaign featured a dedicated site complete with a letter from well-known British beard-lover Richard Branson on just why the 'up to' used to advertise speeds was unfair (now post-ASA redirecting to a more sedate shop.virginmedia.com/bro ··· art=6469 ">speed honesty page) and a Facebook page designed, presumably, to stir up the 'liking' masses.
The campaign pulled few punches on competitors. "Many [broadband providers] are advertising superfast broadband speeds they know full well they cannot deliver," Branson wrote and lines about broadband "fairytales" clearly referred to a Sky campaign featuring Red Riding Hood and The Princess and the Frog which was running at the same time.
In response, BT and Sky filed eight separate complaints which claimed that Virgin had provided misleading information, made unfair comparisons, exaggerated claims and, in general, had run down their broadband businesses. The ASA agreed on all counts.
Is 'up to' fair?
'Up to' has long been a broadband bugbear among UK consumers: several tech magazines take a pretty hard line against it as have, in the past, mainstream consumer rights shows such as the BBC's Watchdog. The main complaint has been that it's fundamentally unfair to show a 'best possible' speed which, in reality, consumers just aren't able to access.
But averages, Virgin's solution, are hardly fair either. The Ofcom research mentioned above readily conceded that averages were higher when, as with Virgin Media and ADSL providers Be and O2, a higher number of urban subscribers means that there is simply less attenuation on lines. Then there's the fact that Virgin Media operates one of UK broadband's harshest traffic management policies, slowing users who exceed fairly small download limits. Neither 'up to's nor averages take any account of that.
But while the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, has periodically ummed and ahhed about 'up to' as a method of advertising speeds and sometimes hinted that it'll bring in a requirement for providers to show estimated speeds, currently 'up to' is in place, hand-in-hand with a voluntary code which shows consumers' estimated line speeds as part of the sign-up process.
Julia Kukiewicz is editor of Chooseisp, a site that helps UK consumers compare the best broadband deals. The site also includes full reviews of deals like BT Infinity.