Virgin Media falls foul of ASA again

BT questions speed claims

Ian Williams, vnunet.com 02 Jul 2008

Virgin Media has again been shot down by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over an ad campaign.

A national press ad with the headline 'Hate to wait?' showed a table with download times for different files depending on the customer's broadband package.

Small print at the bottom stated 'Download speed comparisons are a guide only and assume song is 5Mb and TV show 30 minutes/341Mb. Both cable and ADSL broadband are affected by user volume. Acceptable usage policy applies.'

BT claimed that the ad was misleading because Virgin's Traffic Management Policy capped customer speeds during peak hours, and could not therefore deliver the advertised download rates during that period.

Virgin Media acknowledged that it implemented Subscriber Traffic Management (STM) between 4pm and 9pm.

But the firm insisted that the system was only focused on the heaviest downloaders and uploaders on the network, because it was their actions that slowed down internet speeds for other users.

Furthermore, Virgin Media explained that STM was controlled depending on which package a user subscribed to, and hence would only be initiated if customers downloaded an abnormal amount of data at peak time.

Despite this, the ASA upheld BT's challenge on the grounds of Substantiation and Truthfulness.

The ASA concluded that, in the absence of any clarifying text, readers were likely to understand that the download speeds referenced in the ad applied at all times.

The watchdog considered that the text 'Acceptable usage policy applies' did not make the peak time restrictions clear.

It would be reasonable for readers to expect to be able to download at least one half-hour TV show on the M package, or several half-hour TV shows on the L package, during the five-hour peak period without breaching Virgin's traffic management system and having their speed capped.

The ASA instructed Virgin to clarify future ads and advised the company to seek guidance from the ASA's Copy Advice team when preparing similar ads in the future.

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