ASA rules on ntl "broadband" advertising

Internet Business News, April 11, 2003

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Complaints were recently submitted to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over a national press advertisement for ntl Group Ltd's Internet cable service.

The ad was headlined "High Speed Broadband Internet only GBP14.99 a month" and the complainants challenged the use of the term "broadband" when the advertised service was only 128KB/s.

In response ntl stated that Oftel and the DTI defined broadband as "higher bandwidth always-on services, offering data rates of 128KB/s and above". The company further contended that its service, which was transmitted in a 6MHz channel, was a broadband service within the technical definition.

The ASA acknowledged the evidence presented by ntl but considered that most consumers would understand broadband to mean a service of at least 500KB/s, and therefore the use of the term without qualification was likely to mislead.

It was agreed that ntl would remove the claim "High Speed" from future advertisements and the ASA also asked the company to include a prominent reference to the speed of the service in future.

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