Are you up to speed on broadband advertising?
16 March 2007
In many ways, the growth of the broadband internet market was the business success story of 2006. The market grew by almost 20% and nearly 50% of UK households now access the Internet via a broadband connection.
But, alongside the spectacular success stories, are tales of consumers being misinformed about the services on offer. One of the gripes that rankles with consumers is the failure of ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) services to live up to the bold speed claims in advertisements. It’s well known that few consumers will be able to achieve maximum advertised speeds on a consistent basis so advertisers have traditionally prefixed their speed claims for 1Mb and 2Mb services with the words “up to”. But members of the public, and a cable internet provider, recently objected that claims for faster 8Mb services and, more recently, a super-fast 24Mb service were misleading despite the “up to” qualification. They said the technical limitations of ADSL broadband, which is delivered via standard copper telephone lines, meant that a significant proportion of consumers had no prospect of achieving anything close to the advertised speeds.
The ASA investigated the complaints (click here and here to read the adjudications) and found that the speeds 8Mb and 24Mb services could deliver were significantly affected by signal attenuation, which was related strongly to a customer’s distance from the local telephone exchange. As a result, a significant proportion of customers could not achieve speeds close to the headline speed.
Furthermore, the ASA considered that for 8Mb services the potential to facilitate activities such as video streaming, file sharing and online gaming could be compromised when speeds fell below 6Mbps. In that context, the ASA concluded that the “up to” qualification was not an adequate qualifier in ads for high-speed services, given the impact that signal attenuation could have on speed and performance. The ASA told advertisers that, as well as the “up to” qualification, they should include a prominent statement, within the body copy or its equivalent, along the lines of “top speeds vary significantly, in particular because of a user’s distance from the local exchange”. For 24Mb services, the ASA ruled that the prominent statement remained a requirement even though customers were unlikely to experience a dip in performance when speeds were significantly below 24Mb.
The message is clear: if you or your clients promote a high-speed broadband service, make sure you get up to speed by including a prominent body-copy statement such as the one the ASA has suggested. For specific advice about the acceptability of your own campaign speak to the CAP Copy Advice team.