ASA upholds judgement on BT advert
Wednesday 18 April 2012 09:39:20 by Hayley Mitchell

This morning the Advertising Standards Authority upheld four complaints made about BT adverts aired in August and September last year. Virgin Media and three other complainants claimed the adverts were misleading, stating that their broadband speeds were four times faster than other competitors.

Among the adverts, BT claimed consumers could "Share music, photos and videos at unbeatable speeds. Four times faster broadband. Only from BT". Complainants stated this information misleads consumers into thinking they could receive four times faster broadband in all areas, rather than just uploading with a certain package that BT offer. BT retorted that the package was available to all their customers and the advert did not mislead customers in any way. The ASA however sided with the complainants, upholding all four parts of the complaint and ruling that BT not show the advert again.

Update 1622: BT have released a statement on Infinity ASA ruling.

"BT is disappointed that the ASA has made this judgement based on a somewhat pedantic interpretation of the adverts. We don’t feel that any customers will have been misled by the claims in these ads, which sought to highlight, on the basis of Ofcom speed reports, that Infinity offers download speeds three times as fast as the UK average and offers upload speed which are equal to anything offered by any other ISP.

Upload speeds are indeed unbeatable with Infinity option 2, but we did not make it clear enough that this would not be the case for Infinity option 1. In any event, we will abide by the ASA’s ruling, unlike Virgin Media, which continues to use the claim that they offer the UK’s fastest broadband despite two published ASA rulings saying they should not make this claim."

BT Statement on Infinity ASA ruling