Vodafone promises not to lie about broadband speeds

Vodafone UK is trying to make a big deal out of signing up to an Ofcom code of practice most of its competitors joined ages ago.

The Ofcom voluntary code of practice regarding residential broadband speeds was revised last year. It’s essentially a vow by ISPs not to lie about likely residential broadband speeds in in their marketing. The long-standing practice of framing theoretical maximum speeds that are highly unlikely to be achieved in practice as the headline product was rightly viewed as cynical to the point of dishonesty, so this was supposed to indicate ISPs had turned over a new leaf.

All the major ISPs signed up to it immediately but Vodafone was only just getting its residential broadband act together then and was either not asked or decided not to bother until it had a home broadband operation of sufficient substance to make people care what it said about it.

That time has arrived, it seems, and amid much fanfare and self-congratulatory hauteur Vodafone proudly announced it has signed up to the code. Now, along with all the Cream-soundtracked braying about dropping line rental charges Vodafone vows to tell you the actual broadband speeds you will get from it, not just some big numbers that look good on price comparison websites.

“Having allowed customers to break free from broadband line rentals and try out our mobile network, we are now giving them greater transparency on home broadband speeds,” said Vodafone UK’s Commercial Director Glafkos Persianis.

“Since we entered the market just over a year ago, we have pledged to make a difference by scrapping the out dated and often misleading practices, which have plagued this market. The days of promising theoretical “up to” speeds are over – if a customer does not receive the speeds that they were promised, we will try to fix that, and if that does not work then they are free to leave, no questions asked.”

Just to recap, here are the ISPs that signed up to the same code a year ago: BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, KC, EE and Zen Internet. Furthermore, the following said at the time they were giving signing up serious thought: Hyperoptic, Plusnet, InTouch Systems, The Co-op. So well done Vodafone, if only for giving us an excuse for embedding some Cream at the bottom of the story.