Virgin ad rapped over download capping

Regulators have banned a Virgin Media broadband advert because it failed to mention the provider's policy of capping the download speeds of "heavy users" during peak hours.

The Advertising Standards Authority decided the ad was misleading after a complaint from telecoms rival BT.

The ad, titled "Hate to Wait?", featured a table showing what Virgin claimed to be download times for a typical song or television programme for customers of its different packages. For example on the "up to 2Mbps" M package the times were 22 seconds for a song and under 26 minutes for a programme.

BT said that the speeds were incorrect because of Virgin's traffic management policy, which limits a user's download speeds between 4pm and 9pm once they exceed a set threshold during that period.

"Virgin said their traffic management system only focused on the heaviest downloaders and uploaders on their network, because it was their actions that slowed down internet speeds for other users, especially at peak times," said an ASA ruling today.

Virgin also told the regulator the STM was a "constantly evolving policy" and that "over the last two months, a small number of their customers had been subject to STM". A new policy was also being trialled, it said.

However, the company acknowledged that, for example, a customer on the M package would actually be able to download a typical TV show in 29 minutes during peak hours because their threshold is 300MB, and said it would amend the advert to reflect this.

The ASA said "...it would not be unreasonable 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 hours of the peak time period without breaching Virgin's traffic management system and having their speed capped".

Virgin has removed the download times for TV programmes from its latest advert, newly titled "The Mother Of All Broadband", though the figures for songs remain.