UK advertising watchdog ties itself in knots over broadband marketing

The UK Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that Vodafone’s ‘Gigafast’ service was misleading because some people might reckon that means 1 Gbps.

In reality the brand referred to a range of broadband packages, the fastest of which could still only manage an average of 900 Mbps. Virgin Media thought this was a bit cheeky and so grassed Vodafone up to the ASA, which today upheld the complaint on the grounds that, while some people wouldn’t read much into it, some punters might reckon they would be getting at least 1 Gbps when they weren’t.

“The ASA considered that many consumers would likely understand the prefix ‘Giga’ to be a hyperbolic description of speed, and would therefore generally understand ‘Gigafast’ internet was very fast broadband,” satated the ruling. “However, we considered that a significant proportion of consumers would have sufficient knowledge of broadband terminology to understand Gigafast Broadband as a reference to a service capable of providing speeds of 1 Gbps (1000 Mbps).”

Contrast this with the ASA’s previous ruling on the use of the term ‘fibre’ in broadband marketing. Its conclusion in that case was that hardly anyone would think fibre meant 100% fibre, so it’s fine to just chuck the term around even if loads of the connection was actually over copper. How come people understand giga to mean 1000 Mbps but don’t think fibre means fibre?

To be fair to the ASA there was an additional complicating factor in this case, which is that Vodafone apparently kept banging on about the £23 price point in its Gigafast marketing, when that price only gets you an average speed of 100 Mbps, with the 900 Mbps one costing £48 per month. That seems to be the thing that the ASA most objected to, implying it’s fine with a 900 Mbps average service being called gigafast despite having previously ruled that ‘up to’ claims weren’t allowed.

“Although we considered that the website made clear that Vodafone Gigafast referred to a range of packages which were not all capable of providing 1Gbps, because it implied that consumers could get a service that offered speeds of 1Gbps for £23 per month, when that was not the case, we concluded that it was likely to mislead,” concluded the ruling.

The ASA seems to be increasingly confused about broadband marketing. It seems fine with labelling a package of services, the fastest of which only averages 900 Mbps, as Gigafast and with calling a partly copper connection fibre. At the same time it objects to the use of ‘up to’ in describing broadband speeds and is touchy about ambiguous pricing claims. It needs to either be laissez faire or authoritarian, but right now it seems to jump between those positions on a case by case basis.