ASA upholds Telewest ad complaints

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld two complaints against a Telewest Broadband advert.

The ad, which consisted of a four-page wrap-around on the outside of regional newspapers, was headlined "Blueyonder have cut the price of broadband" and compared the price of Telewest's 256kbps service with BT Broadband's entry-level 512kbps service.

BT and members of the public lodged four complaints. The first complaint was that the comparison of two services with different speeds was misleading. The ASA dismissed that complaint on the basis that the speed of each service was clearly identified. Another complaint that was not upheld argued that the term "free modem" was misleading on the basis that it implied that customers could keep the modem if they stopped subscribing. The ASA explained that because Telewest linked every mention of "free modem" to small print that stated that ownership of the modem remained with Telewest, and that the modem would be reclaimed if subscription ceased, the complaint would not be upheld.

However, two complaints were upheld. The first was a complaint from BT that the speed difference was not noted prominently enough. The ASA agreed, despite an apparent contradiction in their reasoning for dismissing the first complaint in which they said that the "the advertisement compared entry-level broadband products and that BT did not offer a broadband service of less than 512kbps; it considered that the advertisement made clear the advertisers'' broadband service was 256kbps; it concluded that the comparison compared products that met the same needs and was not misleading."

The second upheld complaint was that Telewest's claim that their product was "faster broadband" was misleading because of the 256kbps speed. Telewest argued that the "faster" comparison was intended to represent the difference between broadband and dial-up, but the ASA ruled that "readers were likely to interpret the claim 'faster broadband' to mean a comparison with another broadband service and that the advertisers' broadband product had a comparably faster download speed." The ASA concluded that "because there were domestic broadband services considerably faster than the advertisers' broadband product available, the claim was misleading."