BT’s 20 meg broadband ad banned

We all know that “up to 20 meg broadband” is rarely that, unless you live in your local exchange and have a one meter phone line.  So someone had to get into trouble for promising the on-line earth and not living up to it, and first for the slapdown is everyone’s favourite telephone infrastructure monopolist, British Telecom.

Amazingly their Adam and Jane advert has not been banned for being teeth-grinding tat, but for saying that even at peak time you’ll still be able to browse the web at full speed.  Of the 17 complaints (including rivals Talk Talk, Virgin and Sky Broadband), some complained that ‘Jane’ was browsing at near LAN speeds, and this sort of speed was certainly not available to them.  Indeed, the Advertising Standards Agency pointed out “because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT’s new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mb service even at peak times, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead”. Ouch.  Next up – ‘Unlimited’ mobile broadband promises and why the purveyors should be beaten with large fishes.

Posted by: Ian