ASA Sides With Freeserve In Broadband Dispute

The ASA has intervened in a dispute between Freeserve and NTL by upholding complaints against a series of ads, which misleadingly implied that NTL was the UK’s number one broadband internet provider.

Freeserve objected to the national press and magazine ads for NTL’s 128 kbps internet service, claiming that the product was too slow for its users to be regarded as genuine broadband customers.

With this in mind, the rival internet service provider challenged the claim that NTL was the UK’s leading broadband supplier.

In its defence, NTL provided information which showed that when users of its 128 kbps service were included, it had more residential broadband customers than any other internet service provider in the UK. It also explained that it offered a range of broadband services at different speeds and prices.

The ASA acknowledged that all of NTL’s services met Oftel’s definition of broadband as “higher bandwidth always-on services, offering data rates of 128 kbps and above. However, it considered that most consumers would understand broadband to mean a service with a speed of more than 500 kbps and concluded that the ads were misleading.

The Authority ordered NTL to amend the ads to make clear that its claim to being the UK’s number one broadband internet provider, was based on users of its 128 kbps service.

Broadband was one of the topics for discussion at yesterday’s Westminster Media Forum, which saw E-Commerce Minister, Stephen Timms, refuse to provide Government subsidies to aid the roll-out of broadband in the UK.

Timms dismissed the idea on the grounds that it could distort the market, saying instead that the current system, which is driven by the fierce competition between internet providers, was perfectly adequate.

The latest figures from cable operators, NTL and Telewest, show that the number of UK homes with broadband cable internet access has broken the one million mark (see UK Cable Broadband Tops One Million Households).

ASA: 020 7580 5555 www.asa.org.uk

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